


Sundance

by lowlights



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cowboy AU, Cowboys, DAN AND PHIL - Freeform, Dan Howell - Freeform, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Gay Cowboys, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phil Lester - Freeform, Slow Burn, Some Fluff, Wild West
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-03-05 10:17:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowlights/pseuds/lowlights
Summary: Phil Lester and his gang of outlaws are the wildest people in the West. Known for daring train robberies, safe cracking, and cattle stealing, they strike both fear and reverence into people's hearts. Sure, being the most wanted person in the West has it's downfalls, but Phil Lester lives for adrenaline kicks.Dan Howell lives in a run down house with a barely-there family, working for his mother at the saloon even though all he wants to do is get out of town. When he gets caught up in a heist and kidnapped by Phil’s gang, the boy quickly becomes a new moneymaking scheme... Until he becomes something more to Phil.*updates sundays*





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys guess who's fucking back?! 
> 
> ive had so much fun with this fic and i can't wait for you guys to read it! i hope you enjoy it!
> 
> i did quite some research on the west and the gangs and people who were part of it so this should be fairly accurate (or at least not totally stupid)

The sun rises, casting an eerie orange light on the desert. Phil’s hands are loose on the reins and his body rises and falls as his horse gallops across the desert. Behind him ride 13 men who would follow him to the end of the world. 

He is their leader, a reckless vigilante who masterminds countless heists and commandeers them with steely grace. 

He breathes in, closing his eyes. He is Phil Lester, terror of the Wild, Wild West, and nobody will ever be able to stop him.

The sun beats down on the gang. The air is dry and unforgiving. Phil is seized by pure, childish joy. He takes his gun out of its holster and fires it up into the sky, laughing. Whoops go up in the small crowd behind him. 

It’s another day on the job. 

 

~

 

Dan’s hands burn from the scalding water. He lazily wipes down a glass with a dirty dish towel, eyes straying up to the ceiling. 

“Daniel! Wipe down the counter! What the hell are you doing back here?”

Dan turns around to see his mother’s haggard figure in the doorway. Though she must have been beautiful once, all these years working at the saloon had clearly taken their toll on her. 

Her blonde hair, dry and full of split ends, is pulled into a bun, and her hands are calloused and dirty. 

“Well? Are you just going to stand there?!”

Dan dries his hands with the dish towel, throwing it back down onto the sink. He brushes by his mom without saying anything - once upon a time he might have stood up for himself, reminded her that the only reason that he was washing dishes was because she ordered him to, but he hasn’t done that in years. 

This place, he thinks, can break anyone’s resolve. 

The noise assaults him as soon as he leaves the kitchen through the obnoxious swinging door. He grabs another towel from the bar and begins to wipe down the counter. The towel is probably more dirty than the bar already, but that doesn’t really matter.

Nobody at the saloon gives a fuck. Including him.

Drunk men punch each other in the shoulders, their drinks sloshing all over the floor that Dan knows he’ll have to mop later. 

Women in bright dresses laugh with each other, some gripping a man’s arm. 

Dan watches the people who come in together. He watches the men and women who stare into each other’s eyes as they pour drink after drink down their throats.  
He wonders if they’re really happy. How anyone could be even close to happy in White Pines, Nevada is a mystery to him. 

“Hey, I’m talking to you,” A voice breaks Dan's train of thought. He turns to the side of the bar, where a strange looking man in a white cowboy hat stands. 

“You just gonna stare?” The man says, and Dan’s eyes snap down in embarrassment. 

“Relax. I’m joking.” Dan looks up to see the man smiling at him. 

“Sorry.”

“So you _do_ speak!”

Dan smiles sheepishly.

“Mind getting me more whiskey?”

Dan shakes his head, grabbing the man’s empty jar and taking it over to all the bottles. Finding one that says “whiskey” on it, Dan pours the man a drink and hands the foaming mug back to him. 

“Thank you,” he says simply, still smiling. 

He turns and walks away. Dan watches him go. 

“And what the fuck are you doing?” Someone says from behind him.

He turns to see his mother, and quickly goes back to wiping down the bar. 

~

He leaves the bar before his mother every night. She tells him that this is because she has to clean up, but she makes him clean everything before he goes.

Dan has his own suspicions about what it is that she really does in the kitchen after hours, but he keeps them to himself. 

Stepping outside into the fresh air is something that Dan relishes every night. It’s hot, dry, and uncomfortable by all means, but it doesn’t smell like beer and sweat. He walks down the steps, taking off his token cowboy hat and running his hands through his hair. 

Hearing a sound from the alley between the saloon and the courthouse, Dan turns his head. 

He recognizes the man from the bar earlier, his white cowboy hat standing out against the night. As Dan’s eyes adjust to the dark, he sees that the man has a woman pressed up against the wall. 

And they are kissing. 

And the woman has short hair. And she’s wearing men’s boots. And she has broad shoulders and a button up, and she is not a woman, she is a man.

He finds that he can’t tear his eyes away. The hat falls off the man’s head, resting sideways in the sand. The other man, the man who he is kissing, has a crop of black curly hair. His eyes are closed, his head finding rest on the first man’s shoulders. 

Dan walks away as fast as he can, his mind racing. 

He had never seen anything like… that before. 

The man with the curly hair - his eyes were fluttered closed, his mouth was open in a half moon. He looked almost happy.

~

Dan throws open the screen door, knowing that his father won’t be home. He runs the train from White Pines to Ely, and is rarely home. 

Every time Dan walks up the staircase, he swears that it will break, and this time is no different. The wood bends beneath his boots, creating an awful creaking noise. 

He sits down on his mattress, coughing as dust enters his lungs. He takes off his boots, throwing them in the corner. He unbuttons his shirt, pulls off his belt and jeans, and lies down under his threadbare blanket. 

It is impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position on the hard, dirty mattress, and Dan shifts around for a couple minutes. 

He finds himself staring out the window as he begins to fall asleep. He finds himself thinking of those two men who he saw in the alley.

Sometimes, before Dan goes to sleep, he wishes that he will sleep forever, in a world of strange dreams. He knows that as soon as he wakes up he will be back in the dark saloon, serving alcohol and cleaning dishes. 

He knows that it’s his fate to take over the bar. It’s fairly successful, enough to give him a home. He will never want for food, he will never go without water or sleep. He’ll never have to leave the county.

 

~

 

Phil hisses, leading his crew behind a ridge to give them time to assess the situation. Ever since they had woken up that morning, Phil had had an odd feeling. As it had turned out, a couple odd lawmen had heard them shoot a wild dog, and been trailing them. 

He jumps off his horse, and his men follow suit, tying up their horses out of sight. Phil silences them. Peering over the ridge, he sees five men, deputies by the looks of it, approaching on foot. 

“Stay covered,” Phil warns, backing up himself. 

“We demand you surrender!” One of the lawmen calls out, the slightest tremble in his voice. Phil grins, igniting his crew to do the same. 

“All right, which way do you want us to come out?” Phil asks, his voice dancing, merry.

“Come out right this way. And do not bring weapons.” 

Phil winks, holding out his hand to one of his men, who hands him his gun without protest. 

He throws it over the ridge, knowing that it will slide to a halt by the men’s feet.

“I’m unarmed,” Phil announces, pushing his gun down into his waistband. 

Saluting his men with a smile, he walks slowly around the ridge. “Get down and stay covered,” he instructs. 

And then he walks out into the desert.

Phil was right - five lawmen stand in front of him. The one in the front wears a badge on his shoulder. “I’m the sheriff of White Pines County, and I have grounds for your arrest!” 

Phil smirks. “White Pines, really? I’m surprised a county of which I’ve never even heard of has the means to have a sheriff!”

He turns to the other four men. “And you must be the deputies! How lucky you are, working in such an eventful county.”

And without further adieu, Phil pulls his rifle from his belt and begins firing. He aims for the shoulders, their legs, careful not to kill anyone.

It takes one of the deputies falling to the ground for the shock to set in and the men to snap to action. They begin firing back on Phil, but he is quick and sharp, managing to dart around quick enough to avoid their bullets. 

He single-handedly takes down two more deputies, but quickly realizes that the sheriff is competent with a gun. 

Phil calls out to his men to ready the horses, hoping that the lawmen walked far from where they tied their horses up. 

But before he can turn around and sprint back to the cover of the ridge, the sheriff aims and shoots. 

Phil feels his shoulder jerk back, followed by a dull and yet somehow stinging pain. Despite himself, he calls out, firing his gun without aiming as he leaps below the ridge.  
His men descend on him, but he waves them off, telling them to mount their horses at once. 

With any luck, the sheriff and his remaining deputy were injured by the bullets that Phil let fly behind them. If they are smart, they will go back to their horses before pursuing the gang more.

Trying to ignore the gripping pain in his shoulder, Phil pulls himself up onto his horse, and orders his men to ride further into the ridge. 

They were going to ride to Maypalm, hit the casino in the middle of the town, but this has put them off track. 

Phil has never even heard of White Pines county, but it looks like he and his men will soon know about it. 

 

~

 

Every day for two weeks, Dan has been trying to find the man in the white hat. He isn’t sure why, isn’t sure what he would even say, but when his closes his eyes he sees the image of the two men in the alley, and he can’t get it out of his head. 

The man hadn’t been in the bar since, and Dan had begun to try to put him out of his mind. 

After all, his father had gotten a rare break from conducting the trains, and would be arriving home tonight. Dan will have to bring food home from the saloon so that he has something to eat. 

He sees his father so rarely that he almost seems like a stranger, like an old uncle who sometimes comes around, like a stray dog that he sometimes feeds. It’s strange, having him home. 

When Dan returns from the bar, his father is already in the house, and they greet each other by shaking hands. Dan looks at the rotting wood on the floor, memorizing the details of his boots, shoveling some grub on a plate and placing it in front of his father. 

His mother comes home soon after, giving her husband an exaggerated kiss. Dan scuffs at the floor, wanting to ask her why she stayed at the saloon for so long. He won’t, though. He never does. 

He goes to bed thinking, as he usually does, about what his life would be like if he could leave. He had always wanted to be a lawmen, a deputy or a sheriff. He wants to work for justice, catching the wrongdoers in society and showing them the law.

Instead, he will work at the saloon until he cannot anymore. 

 

~

 

The boys camp outside of the small, shabby looking town that makes up the whole of the county. 

Bored, one of Phil’s men, Billy, approaches him. “Sir, with all due respect, what are we doing here?”

“Evading the law.”

“Can’t we, y’know… do something?”

Phil smiles. “Not a lot to do here, as it seems.”

“Heard that saloon is real popular. Heard they keep all the money behind the bar.”

Phil looks up at Billy, who is adjusting his hat with a crooked smile. 

“Interesting...” Phil says back, and, just like that, it’s decided.

 

~

 

Dan is back on dishes duty. He wonders how people can be so disgusting - he’s sure it isn’t bourbon that turned this cup a curious shade of yellow. 

“Dan!” He hears his mother shout, and he sighs. 

“Coming!”

He moves through the swinging door, accepting the pile of new dishes that his mother drops into his arms. 

He goes back to the kitchen. 

In the middle of washing the fourteenth cup, he hears a bit of a ruckus coming from the bar. Usually, noises don’t reach the kitchen, but sometimes a bar fight breaks out.  
Sighing, Dan sets the cup down and decides to go outside and help break the fight up. 

 

But, as he throws open the door, he sees a much different scene. 

Cowboys - _outlaws_ \- stand in a half-circle, guns pointed at the bar patrons and workers alike.

A man with straight, dark hair, eyes hidden under a black cowboy hat, approaches the bar counter. 

“This,” he says, almost happily, “is a stand up. We don’t want to hurt anybody, we just want money.”

He looks up, making eye contact with Dan. His eyes are a striking blue. Dan sees strange things in them. 

“Sir? If you could, we would love the money you keep behind the bar. We truly don’t want to use force.”

Dan, as if in a trance, trips forward and enters the numbers on the safe. He pulls out a wad of cash, standing up and realizing that his face is inches away from the outlaw’s. 

“Hello,” he says, holding out his hand. Dan places the money in it. He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that this is all over, that the outlaws will accept the money and leave, and that he will ever have to deal with anything like this again.

The outlaws begin to lower their guns, but before they turn to go, the door swings open and slams into the wall. 

Sheriff Maxwell steps into the room, Joe Jones, a deputy, follows him. 

“Too late!” The sheriff announces, “You should have known better than to try to run away from me in my own county.”

The man who Dan had just given his money to swivels around. His hand goes to his shoulder reflexively, and Dan notices an ugly and badly treated wound. 

“The game is up, it seems,” the man speaks, his tone even, almost inviting. 

“Yes. Drop your weapons and submit to the law, or things will get ugly.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man turns back around, making eye contact with Dan as he pulls his gun out of his holster and drops it on the ground. 

The other men seem reluctant to follow their leader, but he stands up straight and tells them to follow orders.

Suddenly, before Dan knows it, he is being pulled over the bar. A strong arm constricts his throat, and he cries out in surprise. His eyes dart around the room and find his mother, who looks horrified as she crouches in the corner. 

He feels something metal being pressed to his forehead.

“You will let us go, or I will shoot this man.” 

Fuck. 

The outlaws bend over, pick their discarded guns up from the floor, and walk out of the saloon as if they just came in to buy a drink. The sheriff lowers his gun, his eyes moving from the gang to Dan to the other people at the bar. 

Dan begins to struggle, crying out hoarsely, looking frantically at his mother. 

“I suggest you stop,” the man holding him says simply, but Dan does not. 

They leave the saloon. He hears a gun being loaded, the metal being pressed to his forehead again.

“I suggest. You stop.” The man repeats.

Dan’s limbs feel limp. 

They put him on a horse, the gun still pressed to his head. They ride away, Dan’s body jerking up and down as the horse gallops. He feels like he’s going to cry, like he’s going to pass out, like he’s about to die. 

It’s ironic, in a way. 

He had always wished to get out White Pines. But never, never like this.


	2. chapter two

Every day that Dan wakes up, it takes him a minute to realize where he is. 

First, he will the sand in his hair and on his clothes. Then he will notice the rope tied around his hands. 

Then he will sit up, realize that the rope is connected to a wooden pole, and see the dozen outlaws sleeping around him. 

The first few days, he had screamed nonstop. He had hoped for a miracle, hoped that the sheriff had followed them or that another lawman would find him, but they were truly in the middle of nowhere. 

The worst part was listening to the gang talk about what they were going to do with them. ‘Bring me home,’ he wanted to tell them, something that he never thought he would say.

Some of the gang wanted to dump him, leave him in the desert and let him find his own way back. 

But what the rest wanted, what their leader wanted, was to hold him for ransom or sell him to some employer in another county. That way, they could “make a profit off him”. 

The outlaws sickened him, none as much as their leader. Phil. The men revered him as if he was a god. His word was pretty much law, and Dan must admit that the plans he came up with were practically foolproof. 

He was the one who had pulled Dan over the bar at the saloon, who had held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him to escape the sheriff and the law. Dan has never been more sure of his want to be a lawman himself. He imagines himself breaking out of his binds, stealing a horse and riding home, and becoming the man who tracks down Phil Lester's wild bunch. 

These are mere fantasies, and, as far as the cowboys are concerned, they will stay that way. The ropes around his wrists and ankles are so tight that they've begun to cut his skin. The cowboys are light sleepers, quick with guns, and there's always someone assigned to watch over him. 

There's no way Dan will ever get out of here unless he thinks up a plan that could actually work. And the only ones that he can think of would require him to be a lot stronger and a lot tougher than he really is. 

It's the early morning, the sun barely above the horizon, and yet the boys are cleaning up their camp with rehearsed speed. Horses are saddled, hats are donned on heads, and, finally, Dan's ropes are untied from the wooden pole. 

A redhead with a beard manhandles him onto a smaller, chestnut horse who they keep to carry extra guns. His feet are tied to the stirrups, and his reins are tied to another man's horse. 

By the time the sun has risen, the cowboys have loaded their few belongings into saddle bags and jumped up onto their horses. They ride with a sense of reckless abandon, as if they have nothing to fear. 

Dan's body is jerked up and down uncomfortably. Despite living in Nevada his whole life, Dan had never really ridden a horse before. He had been too busy working at the saloon for his mother. 

For some reason, thinking of his family makes Dan's stomach lurch uncomfortably. Though he had always seen his mother as more of a boss, and his father as more of a stranger, he would rather be home with them than here. 

He would rather be _anywhere_ but here. 

He finds his eyes wandering to Phil, who rides in the front of his pack on his big black horse. According to the stories that the cowboys traded while keeping watch over Dan last night, Phil had either won his horse in a gunfight or tamed it in the wild. 

Phil turns around, yelling something, his face euphoric. 

Dan wonders how living like this could make someone so happy. Having to sleep outside, no matter the weather, pretty much every night. Robbing honest citizens of their hard-earned cash and goods. Probably killing people, too. 

Even though Dan hadn't seen the gang kill anyone yet, he doesn't doubt that Phil would've shot him if the sheriff had tried to make a move. 

The sun rises high in the sky, and the heat is enough to make beads of sweat drip down Dan's face. The gang takes a break, jumping off their horses by a rare pool of water. They retie Dan's wrists together, but are too lazy to tie him to the pole again.

"Boys!" Phil shouts, and everyone stands to attention. "Anyone feeling like volunteering to watch over our little captive?"

Every time Phil mentions him, he always finds some sort of demeaning name to call him. 

"Nobody?" He grins, and it's clear that he isn't angry at the lack of volunteers.  
"I think it's your turn, Phil!" Someone yells, and Phil laughs in good sport.  
"Alright, alright. I guess that's only fair!" He looks over at Dan and winks. 

While the rest of the boys wade in the small pond, splashing around and filling up bottles, Dan sits by the horses. And by Phil. 

Dan sneaks side glances at the other boy, trying not to look at him directly and cause a conversation to begin. 

Phil leans back against a saddle bag, one of his legs outstretched and the other propped up. He looks like the picture of relaxation; his hat is pulled down to cover his eyes, and he's unbuttoned his short halfway to combat the heat. 

After a while of this, Phil turns onto his side so that he's staring right at Dan, who determinedly looks away. 

"So, is there a particular reason why you keep staring at me, or are you just taking in the view?" Phil smirks, laughing as Dan looks down at his lap. 

He steals another glance at Phil, who meets his eyes and raises his brows. His shirt is twisted, exposing most of his chest and stomach. 

"Silent, aren't you?" Phil shakes his head and leans back again. 

Dan feels his blood boil. Phil is acting like he and Dan are friends, when really Dan is a prisoner being used for money and Phil is the person who captured him. Dan looks the other direction, determined not to let his eyes stray again. 

For some reason, Phil finds this incredibly amusing. 

After what feels like years but is probably only an hour, Phil stands up and calls out for everyone to put the bags back onto the horses and get back to riding. Phil is the one who puts Dan on his horse this time, and he takes obvious pleasure in Dan's uncomfortableness. 

His shirt is still unbuttoned, even more so than it was before, and Dan looks away. 

Phil secures Dan's horse to another cowboy's, but doesn't bother with attaching his feet to the stirrups or his hands to the reins. It's the first time since his capture that Dan has had full control of his body. 

Before Phil walks off, he takes his hat off his head and places it on Dan's. "You'll get burned," he says simply. 

Dan has half a mind to take it off and throw it into the dust to show Phil exactly what he thinks of him. It is sunny, though, and Dan doesn't want to get burned. 

As soon as the horses take off again, Dan's body begins to bounce up and down, jerking around uncomfortably. He doesn't understand how the rest of the men look so at home on their horses, how their slight bouncing doesn't bother them at all. 

Dan begins to sweat again, and wipes his brow with the back of his hand, shifting the hat on his head around a little. 

As he returns his hands to the reins, he realizes that he can use his arms and legs freely again. His mind immediately goes to escaping. His horse is the last one in the pack. As long as he is silent, he might be able to get off the horse and move to a place where the cowboys won't be able to find him. 

Dan's eyes dart around uncertainly. Phil is riding at the front of the pack, as usual, and the rest spread out around him. Everyone is looking at the desert ahead, listening out for Phil's commands. Nobody really pays any attention to Dan - they probably think that there's no way that he would even attempt to get away, much less do it successfully. 

Dan waits until Phil turns around to talk so that everyone's attention will be focused on something else. 

Unsure of how exactly to go about getting off the horse, Dan tries to jump off the side. He falls hard on his shoulder, and lets out a grunt of pain despite his best efforts. The hat that Phil put on his head sits a couple meters to his left, and he sits up, wincing. 

He sees that the horses have kept riding, and breathes out a sigh of relief. The relief is quickly replaced, however, by urgency. It won't be long until someone glances behind them and notices his absence, and when that happens, Dan needs to be long gone. Or, at least, out of sight. 

He grabs the hat and puts it back on his head, using the arm which he didn't fall on to prop himself up so that he can stand. 

Dan looks again, sees the horses still charging forward and way from him, and begins to walk in the other direction as briskly as he can. 

He notices quickly that he isn't covering much ground. If the cowboys started riding back for him now, they would probably come upon him in minutes. He turns to his right and starts walking that way, hoping that the cowboys would continue going straight if they came back to try to find him. 

After a couple of minutes of this, he hears the telltale swishes of hooves on sand. He freezes, wondering what will happen to him when the cowboys come upon him - but he only hears one horse. 

He turns around, and comes face to face with Phil's stallion. Fuck. 

Dan takes a couple of steps backwards, and Phil swings down from his saddle. He looks at Dan with an unreadable expression - his eyebrows raised, a hand on his horse and another hand swinging at his side. 

"That," he says, "was not the smartest move."

Then he grins, laughs. 

Dan looks down, unsure of how he should act. He was not exactly expecting Phil to think that the situation was funny. 

"What did you think you were going to do, walk home before we realized you were gone? Good thing you kept my hat on, I wouldn't want you sunburned!" Phil laughs again, making fun of Dan. 

"Better than staying here with you," Dan spits, not wanting the outlaw to think that Dan suddenly didn't give a fuck about being imprisoned.  
"Didn't think my company was _that_ bad..."  
"Stop making fucking jokes."

Phil closes his mouth, cocking his head and looking into Dan's eyes. Dan looks away. 

"Alright," Phil finally says, "But you're gonna have to ride my horse back."

Phil swings up onto the saddle of his horse, then pulls Dan up and puts him on the back of the saddle. 

"Arms around me," Phil says, and Dan does absolutely nothing. "Seriously. You'll fall."

Dan reluctantly puts his arms around Phil's waist. 

Phil kicks his horse one, twice, three times, and they begin flying across the desert. If this was any other situation, Dan would be enjoying how fast the desert was going by, how the wind felt on his face, and how exhilarating it was to be riding across a vast expanse of practically nothing as the sun begins to go down. 

But with his arms around Phil, whose fucking shirt is still unbuttoned, Dan just hopes that it ends soon. 

And, mercifully, it does. Dan sits on the outlaws set up their camp for the night, building a small fire. Nobody comes over to him to tie his wrists or ankles, not even to keep watch over him. He has a sneaking suspicion that this is on Phil's orders, because the outlaws routinely glance at him and then at their leader. 

The sun goes down, and the only source of light is the dim moon and the fire which all the boys sit around telling stories and discussing the day's events. 

Phil is the favorite, telling stories of shootouts and risky robberies and safe cracking. Sometimes he winces when he moves his arms closer to the fire. Dan remembers the gunshot wound that he had seen in the saloon when Phil took him. 

He can't imagine having to do all that Phil does with a bullet wound in his shoulder. Dan would know how to treat it, too. He had learned how to clean and dress wounds as a child. His father, before becoming a conductor, had worked as a miner. 

His first aid skills had come in handy at the saloon sometimes, when somebody would cut themselves on a piece of glass or slip on a puddle of whiskey. 

Dan was no doctor, but he could probably help. Well, he could help if Phil was anyone else. 

The cowboys drift off one by one, and soon enough Dan and Phil are the only ones awake. Dan is waiting to be tied up on his post, but instead Phil just comes over and sits by him. 

"You won't run away? If I don't tie you?"

Dan is silent. 

"I don't like doing it, you know..."  
"Why don't you just let me go, then?"

Phil sighs. "My men would never let me hear the end of it. I'm their leader, you know? I'm supposed to be steely and mysterious. No mercy."

Dan looks up at the pale moon and the stars. He could count a lot more here in the desert than he ever could at home. 

"I'm sorry, Dan."  
"If you really were you'd take me home."

Phil gets up, grabs a bottle of beer from a sleeping cowboy and taking a swig. He stares at Dan, looking at him from above, as if he's inferior. No matter how much Dan dislikes him, he must admit that Phil commands attention. 

"You don't have to believe me. But it's true."

He sits back down with his beer in hand. He offers Dan a sip, which he takes. 

"You fascinate me," Phil says, very quietly, making eye contact with him in the dark.

Dan rolls over, his back facing Phil and his throat feeling warm with alcohol. It's too late to be talking to someone he hates, especially when said person is not making much sense. It must be the alcohol. 

Dan closes his eyes, hoping that sleep comes soon. 

 

Phil leans back, his hat lying somewhere in the sand. He watches the fire die as he takes the last swigs of beer. He looks over to his right, where Dan is asleep. Or at least pretending to be. 

Phil sighs. Dan looks so peaceful asleep. It makes Phil feel even worse for everything that he's done. There's really no way to resolve the situation, though, at least for a couple months. 

He reaches out his hand and places it on Dan's back, unsure of why he is doing so in the first place. He rubs it back and forth a couple times, then turns over himself and tries to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for comments and kudos they make me v happy
> 
> tell me what you think! i just finished the outline for this and im so excited to write it


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been a minute but the story is picking up

The buzz in the early morning air is palpable - as it always is on a heist day. And today is particularly special. The boys had been planning this for months, ever since they had received a tip that the train from Steamtown to San Juan was to be carrying passengers with a magnificent sum of gold. 

Or so Dan had heard. 

Personally, he had been the last of the group to wake up. And even when he did, he chose to just sit in the sand and watch as the rest of the boys set up to leave. 

They stamped out the fire, fed and dressed the horses, and shook the sand out of their clothes with huge grins on their faces. 

It’s hard for Dan to imagine how they could be happy doing something so mundane. It isn’t really a surprise anymore, how happy they are. It had been almost three weeks since they had kidnapped Dan, and he’s getting used to how perplexingly happy they were. 

In fact, though he would never admit it, Dan finds himself almost jealous sometimes. Almost. 

Phil whistles, and all the boys stop what they’re doing to turn and give him their attention. Dan takes it as his cue to get up and wander over in that direction. Once, on the second week of his captivity, Dan had tried to hold up the gang by refusing to get on his horse. 

This had ended with Dan being fireman carried by a man who hadn’t showered in weeks, so from then on Dan got ready when he had to. 

Phil catches his eye and winks, making Dan look down at his dirty shoes. For some reason, the man who kidnapped him seems to think that they are the best of friends - something that Dan is endlessly confused and annoyed by. 

Though, as it turns out, having the leader of an outlaw gang on your side does have some advantages. His wrists and ankles hadn’t been tied in weeks, and he gets less dirty looks with every passing day. 

“Right, boys!” Phil shouts, grinning. 

A cheer rises through the shabby crowd. 

Without missing a beat, Phil climbs on his horse and motions the rest of the boys to follow. Dan’s horse is still tied to some young blonde guy’s, but this is more about Dan’s lack of coordination on a horse than it is about his status as a captive. 

In fact, in the eyes of an outsider, it might look like Dan is just another member of Lester’s gang. An uncoordinated and unmotivated one, but a member all the same. Surprisingly, Dan doesn’t absolutely hate the idea. 

Soon enough, the gang is galloping through the desert. Dan’s legs wrap around the sides of his modest horse, one hand holding his hat firmly on his head. It’s the same hat Phil gave him on the day of his failed “escape” - Phil had refused to have it back, saying that he has enough hats as it is. 

Dan smiles to himself. The one thing that he likes about this lifestyle is the freedom - he always feels strangely content riding through the desert. It’s almost too bad that this upside is outnumbered by a million other things that Dan hates. 

After a couple of hours, Phil slows down, and the gang follows suit. 

It’s remarkable that Phil always seems to have his bearings in the desert. He always knows where they are, even though, to Dan, everything looks the same everywhere. 

They move through the desert at a mere trot, leading Dan to believe that they are close. 

His suspicions are confirmed when the boys spot tracks in the distance. They cheer, hands coming off the reins and pumping in the air. 

Phil quiets them with a wave of his hand, but anyone could sense the giddiness in his eyes and smile. 

He leads them all behind a fairly large dune, where they go over the plan again in hushed voices. 

It’s clear that nobody really needs this recap - they’ve all absolutely memorized their roles, however small. Dan, however, hasn’t heard anything beyond snippets of conversation about it, and he passively listens in this time. 

It’s obviously well-planned, leaving almost no opportunity for error - it’s clear that Phil has put endless thought into it. Dan still can’t help but to think of millions of ways that it could go wrong. 

The rest of the gang seems unfazed by these possibilities. They are either brave, thinks Dan, or incredibly stupid. 

He breaks out of his thoughts quickly when he hears his name. 

“Dan, you should be paying attention!” Phil whisper-shouts playfully. 

Dan suddenly has a great interest in his left foot. 

“As I was saying, I can’t exactly leave you here on your own... too many opportunities to run!” Dan looks up and catches Phil’s eyes, which twinkle with mischief. 

“We all know your escape attempts are foolproof,” Phil jeers, and a laugh echoes in the crowd. 

Dan knows that Phil is making fun of him, but he can’t really bring himself to feel resentful and angry - as he would have a couple weeks ago. 

“So, you’ll be coming with me and James to the front of the train.” 

Dan’s head snaps up at that, unsure if he heard Phil’s words correctly. His concern seems to be shared by the entire gang, judging by the uneasy murmurs. 

“Hey, c’mon boys! Would you rather keep an eye on him?” 

The crowd silences themselves, and Phil raises an eyebrow in recognition. He maintains eye contact with Dan as he shouts out orders, walking his horse through the crowd until his horse is only a couple inches away from Dan’s. 

He leans over and unties the frayed rope that had been connecting Dan to another cowboy for weeks. 

“You know how to ride?” He asks, eyes glinting in the sunlight. 

If he’s being honest, Dan really isn’t the best rider. He hopes that, somehow, he’s picked up a few tricks from being on a horse and watching the rest of the gang ride. 

“Yeah, guess so,” is his response, to which Phil grins. 

They remain behind the dune for a couple more minutes, a moving mess of organized chaos, until Phil quiets it all with a wave of his hand. 

“Shh,” he calls out, “I can hear the train.”

Scattered cheers go up, but silence themselves immediately. 

Phil rides to the edge of the dune, glancing back to motion the crowd slowly forward. 

“Dan?” He prompts, and Dan tentatively kicks his horse, who stays exactly where she is. 

“You’re meant to kick the horse, not tap her!”

Dan kicks harder, and his horse moves forward, albeit slowly. He tugs on the reins when he reaches Phil’s side, and, mercifully, the horse stops. 

“Just follow my lead, don’t worry about it,” Phil says softly, before turning once more and cheering. 

“Let’s go!”

Phil leans forward, kicks his horse into gear, and shoots across the desert before Dan can even get his horse to start walking. After a couple of timid kicks, though, he finally gets his horse to start moving faster, and soon he is trailing Phil at a respectable distance. 

He steals a glance back to see that the most of the gang is following, though some are scattering in different directions, and some are staying behind the dune. ‘This plan really is well-orchestrated,’ Dan thinks to himself as he tries to catch up to the leader. 

He has to admit, as the train comes around the bend, it’s ugly maroon almost blending in with the cliff behind it, he feels like he’s on top of the world. It’s no wonder that he can hear the boys around him whooping - he almost lets out a joyful yell himself. 

Phil directs his horse close to the tracks, until he is running next to them. Dan pulls closer to him. The front of the train speeds by, knocking Dan’s hat off his head and making the string pull at his neck. He looks over at Phil, who is a blur next to the train. He raises his gun, looking pointedly through the window of the conductor’s car. 

The conductor gets the idea, and Dan catches a look at his wide eyes through the window. The train begins to slow, but Phil does not. 

The cowboys swarm around the cars, catching up to the train as it eventually stops. 

Dan, breathing hard despite his best efforts, finally catches up to Phil, who is leisurely making his way a couple cars up to the conductor’s car. 

He gets off his horse, and Dan does the same, keeping a tight grip on the reins. 

Phil pounds on the door, and hands the reins of his impressive stallion to Dan for safekeeping. “Usually I have to hold the reins and negotiate with the conductor,” Phil jokes with another wink. 

He really, really needs to stop that.

In a feat of intimidation that leaves even Dan feeling humbled and nervous, Phil forces the conductor to separate the engine, tender, baggage, and express cars from each other. 

“And, of course, I’ll need to you to come help me get admitted to the express car, yes?”

“Y - yes…”

“Perfect.”

It’s strange, how unflinchingly polite Phil is. As they make their way from the front to the middle of the train, Phil makes smalltalk with the man, who quickly becomes as confused as he is scared. 

The door of the express car is open, but the expressman is met with a couple of shotguns in his face instead of the conductor. 

“Excuse me, sir, but I’m going to need admittance onto this train. Actually, everybody here will need such - my apologies.”

Doors all throughout the train are opened, and Dan is left with two pairs of reins in his hands as he watches the climax of the carefully planned heist come to fruition. 

Phil drags a couple boxes out of the express car, giving the expressman a quick salute and a “Good day!”

It’s quite a sight - outlaws hopping off train cars and stuffing coins into saddle bags, yelling out polite sentiments to the people who they just robbed. 

Phil motions for Dan to help him load the gold into his horse’s bag, but Dan shakes his head slowly. Though the adrenaline rush had certainly been pleasant, he can’t forget that not too long ago he wanted to be a deputy, tracking down and catching these outlaws. 

And he still thinks that what they’re doing is wrong. 

Phil cocks his head at Dan’s refusal, but doesn’t question it. He begins loading bags on his own. 

“You know, my boys are under specific instructions to never steal from anyone who has calloused hands or children.”

“... Still stealing.”

Phil chuckles to himself, but it doesn’t sound happy. “Dan, the law isn’t always right.”

The two make eye contact. 

“What do you mean?” Dan asks. 

Phil just shakes his head, finishing loading the bags. “Alright, boys,” he calls, “Let’s move out!”

They ride away slower than they rode up - everyone, including the horses, is tired, and there’s nothing that the people on the train can do to get to them anytime soon. 

Nobody brings up tying Dan back to the other cowboy’s horse. 

He could get away. 

Strangely, he doesn’t feel much like it. 

 

A couple hours later, the boys come upon a small town in the middle of nowhere. A unanimous decision is made to stop at a bar and get drinks - “no funny business” - so they tie up the horses at the outskirts of town. 

The bar is cramped, even smaller than Dan’s mother’s, and the smell of beer is so strong that you could probably get drunk just from standing inside for a couple minutes. 

The cowboys slap down newly stolen coins and buy cheap drinks, sitting down wherever there’s room. Some attempt to dance in the middle of the room, the floor creaking under the weight of their uncoordinated feet. 

A couple women, bright colors and low necklines, sit down and play poker with the men, and drunken laughter echoes throughout the small space. 

Dan is reminded of home. He is used to being the one behind the bar, not a patron in front of it, and in his nostalgic haze he sits down without ordering a drink.

Home - Dan isn’t sure if he misses it. 

He isn’t sure about a lot of things, actually. Namely, Phil. 

Thinking of the ringleader, Dan’s eyes dart around the room to find him. He expects him to be sitting at the bar, at a table with a girl on his lap, even twisting around in the middle of the room, but he is nowhere to be found. 

Dan sits at his empty table, hands empty, for a couple more minutes, and then decides to leave in search of air that isn’t tainted with beer. 

Coming out into the fresh air reminds him of leaving the bar at night and breathing in the desert air deeply. He looks to the left to see that there’s an alley next to this bar as well. 

He wonders if people throw their beer bottles into it like they do back home. He wonders if people leave the bar and wander down the alley, hand in hand, looking for a private moment. 

He remembers the one that he himself intruded on - the man in the white hat and the other one in the black hat. He feels himself blushing in the night air. 

“Dan?” A voice calls out softly. 

Dan turns around to see Phil sitting at the bottom of the stairs, his figure almost blending into the dark. 

“Oh,” Dan says, unsure of what to do. 

He walks down the stairs, hovering there for a second before deciding to sit down next to Phil. 

As his eyes adjust more to the dark, he sees that Phil is looking straight ahead, his face screwed up. 

He’s ripped the sleeve off his light shirt, exposing a nasty infection on his shoulder. Blood, obvious veins, and irritation surround a circle, which Dan remembers must be the bullet wound. 

Having an untreated wound in your shoulder for three weeks, and doing all that Phil has been doing on top of that, cannot be good. 

Phil winces. “I know I need to just stomach it - my boys are relying on me - but damn, it hurts.”

“How’d you get it?” Dan asks, trying to be quiet, as if that will somehow lessen the pain in Phil’s shoulder. 

“Shootout.”  
“And you were the only one shot?”  
“Yes. And the only one shooting.”  
“Your boys weren’t there?”  
“They were - hiding. I told them to stay covered.”  
“So you took on this guy by yourself?”  
“Five.”  
“Five…?”  
“There were five of them.”

Dan lets out a breath of disbelief. No wonder these men would do anything for their leader. He would obviously do anything for them. 

“I think I can… I mean, I know some first aid.”  
“You don’t have to.”

Dan pauses. “... I know.”

Phil lets out a breath, and Dan thinks he sees him smile in the dark. 

“Glad we picked you up, then, Dan.”

“I think… I think I am too.”

Phil definitely smiles at that. He reaches out the arm that isn’t wounded and lightly punches Dan in the side. 

“We’ll have to fix you up with a real horse, in that case.”

The air is still and dry. Dan can hear the faint music and cheers from inside. The sky is full of stars, and if he looks hard enough, he thinks he can see the horses in the distance. Phil, next to him, breathes in and out, his breath slightly shaky. 

It’s different, so much different, than home. 

Dan finds he likes waking up somewhere and falling asleep somewhere else, though. He thinks he could get used to seeing these stars every night. 

Phil had said that “the law isn’t always right”. Dan finds himself beginning to believe this, beginning to want to know all the ins-and-outs of its meaning. 

“We should probably go inside,” Phil says, breaking the silence and Dan’s train of thought.   
“You can go.”

He does. 

Dan stares at the sand on his shoes as the night winds on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> literally cannot wait for you guys to know about phil's backstory haha
> 
> thanks for your comments/kudos, means a lot to me x


	4. chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i decided i'm gonna try to stick to a regular updating schedule so that y'all don't have to wait around, so look out for new chapters on sunday.

Dan wakes up in the middle of the night. He’s the only one who’s up, and the air around him is completely silent. 

Instead of feeling peaceful, though, he feels like he’s suffocating. 

Deciding that a short walk might do him some good, Dan pulls himself up off the canvas blanket beneath him and walks towards where the horses are being kept for the night. 

It’s been about a month - Dan’s estimate - since he was captured by the gang. 

He was no longer bound by ropes every night, but still very much their captive. 

After that night outside the bar, Dan thought that Phil would adopt him as part of the group - but he hadn't. Dan was still riding the slow chestnut horse, and still had to be with another cowboy in most situations. 

Phil was a little bit apologetic, but it seemed like he was taking one for the team by continuing to treat Dan as inferior. Most of the outlaws still thought of Dan as utterly incompetent and just an easy way to make some extra money. 

Maybe they should, too. After all, Dan can’t ride very well. He can’t build a fire, and he’s not quite strong enough to dress the horses. He isn’t even sure of whether or not he wants to go home, and he definitely isn’t sure if he fits in with the lifestyle that the cowboys lead. 

It’s no wonder, really, that they don’t like him much. No wonder that they don’t want him to stay for long. 

Dan himself doesn’t even know whether or not he wants that. 

He turns back towards the camp, walking slowly toward the dying fire and sitting on the canvas that makes up his bed. 

The orange light from the fire brightens his face and warms him up as his eyes scan over the horizon. Phil is asleep in the bed next to him, wearing jeans and no shirt. His body is haphazardly spread out on the makeshift bed - his right leg isn’t even on it. 

Dan smiles. He looks completely at ease asleep, despite the wound on his shoulder and the sand that is surely digging into his skin. 

Dan had tried to treat the wound, but the bullet fragment had been in Phil’s shoulder for weeks. Phil had smiled when Dan told him that he would just have to deal with it until it scarred. 

“At least it will look good,” he had commented. 

Dan had wrapped it up to keep sand and dirt away, but if Phil moves around this much in his sleep every night, Dan isn’t sure how much good it will do. 

The fire crackles as it dies, and Dan lies down on his back. Dressing Phil’s wound had been the only time in the past week where he’d been alone with the older man, and the only time that he’d felt like he slightly belonged with the group. 

And the belonging? Dan had to admit, he didn’t hate it. It had felt almost natural. For a second, he had returned to what he had been thinking at the bar that night - that maybe the life of an outlaw suited him. 

Then, the group had gone back to not giving an ass about him, and he’d gone back to feeling like all he wanted to do was be back home, working at the bar. 

His feelings on that matter had been flip-flopping an alarming amount in the past week. 

Dan shuts his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep. 

It seems like he’s only blinked before the bustle of the early-morning wakes him up. Before he knows it, they’re riding through the desert.

It would be nice to, at the very least, know where they were going, but nobody has seen it fit to let the captive in on their plans. Obviously. 

After a couple hours of speeding through the desert, Phil puts his hands in the air and everybody slows down. 

Phil speaks to a couple of boys next to him, but Dan can’t hear what he says. 

Finally, Phil turns his horse and rides back through the crowd, throwing out hushed orders, and then returns to his place at the front. 

The horses start moving again, but abruptly turn right at Phil’s request. 

Dan is utterly confused. 

They ride like this for about an hour. The sun hangs high in the sky, beating down from overhead. Dan can tell that Phil is worried. His shoulders aren’t loose, his posture isn’t relaxed like it usually is on a horse. 

Dan looks up at the sky, watching a couple clouds and willing them to cover up the sun. It seems like as soon as he looks down again the trouble starts. 

A small bit of wooded area stands in front of them, and, from the cover of the trees, about a dozen men emerge. They’re dressed uniformly, sitting up straight, and every single one of them carries a gun - all of which are being pointed directly at the faces of the outlaws. 

The cowboy’s at the front of the pack desperately try to control their horses as they pull guns from their holster and point them back at the men.

“Fucking Pinkerton,” someone next to Dan growls, “Probably been trying to find us ever since that train last week.”

Dan’s only seen Pinkerton detectives once. When he was a kid, before he spent all day pouring drinks at the saloon, a couple of men had come by White Pines as they were trailing a couple odd men who had stolen cows from a farmer a couple counties over. 

Dan had stood on the porch, in awe of their stature and uniform. For a while after that, his dearest hope was to become a detective and work for the agency. 

Now, he just might be killed by them. 

“Scatter!” He hears Phil shout, and the men follow his request without question, quickly turning their horses every which way and galloping off. 

Dan decides to ride back the way they came, trying to put as much distance between himself and the lawmen as possible on his slightly sluggish horse. 

He hears a gunshot, but does not look back. Adrenaline and fear course through his veins. He wills his horse to speed forward, as fast as possible. 

He hears a cry of pain, and looks back to see one of the boys lying in the sand, hands pressing into what Dan imagines must be a bullet wound on his leg. His horse bucks in the air, eyes wide in horror, and darts off frantically. 

Someone begins to ride after the loose horse, and another man attempts to pull the fallen outlaw up onto his horse. 

But the detectives don’t seem to be worried about this scene. They migrate towards Phil, the obvious leader of the pack, who is attempting to command the men around him.

His voice, shouting orders that Dan can’t quite make out, is steady, as are his hands on the reins. His horse stands tall and proud, and Phil’s head is held high. 

Dan catches his eye, though, and he can see the genuine fear inside of them. 

Dan is the coward of the group, hanging back and watching the others get hurt. It’s no wonder the rest of the boys won’t accept him. 

Suddenly, Dan is seized with a need to do something. He directs his horse towards the wounded man and the man trying to help him, heart racing as he picks up speed. 

He calls out to the men, and they look him up and down, obviously skeptical. They must be desperate, though, because they turn to meet him halfway. 

“Shot,” the unhurt man says by way of explanation, “his leg.”

Dan gets down off his horse, and helps the wounded man down as well. 

His pants are ripped, blood seeping through them. Dan sucks air in. He’s never seen a real bullet wound besides Phil’s - and that had been long after the fact. 

All he knows is that he needs to get the bullet out, or whatever fragments he can find. 

“I’m sorry,” he warns, then turns the man’s legs towards the sun and catches the gleam of metal. 

Dan gets up, reaching into his saddle bag for whatever he can find, and ends up with a makeshift tool made out of a gold coin and some hard, probably inedible stalk of something. 

He can’t imagine what pain the other man must be in - after all, Dan is digging around in his new bullet wound, and he isn’t the most experienced doctor in the world. But the man looks forward, face screwed up into a wince, and breathes heavily instead of screaming out. 

Something about the outlaws that Dan has noticed - they put everyone ahead of themselves. 

Dan digs out a couple scraps of metal, and decides that if he does anything more, the man will probably pass out. So, he rips off the bottom of his shirt and wraps the other man’s leg tightly. 

“There. Um, you should probably stay here. Out of the fight and stuff,” Dan rambles. 

The other man grunts in return, then speaks after a couple seconds. “I’m Lennie. Thanks.”

“That’s okay.”

Dan finds himself scanning the fight for Phil - it’s not at all difficult to find him. In the midst of the chaos, he stands tall, steady. Three of the detectives surround him, guna raised, but he fends them off by moving around, two guns raised - one in each hand. 

“Hey,” the wounded man next to Dan says - Lennie.   
“What?” Dan replies, unwilling to take his eyes off of Phil.   
“You should probably take my gun, in case someone comes over here. Don’t think I can use it.”

Dan turns to look at Lennie, nodding slowly. Dan’s only shot a gun a couple of times, and hasn’t in a while. But it feels good to be trusted, even in a small way. 

“It’s in the holster. ‘Round my waist.”

Dan reaches down and opens the leather holster, pulling out an old, dirty gun with initials carved into the side. 

“Be careful with her,” Lennie grunts, before leaning back into the sand and closing his eyes to rest. 

Dan feels his heartbeat quicken. If someone comes around to them, it will be entirely up to him to make sure that he doesn’t get shot, and that Lennie doesn’t get shot again. 

He keeps his eyes trained on the detectives. A couple of them have retreated towards the treeline, wounded or afraid, but a good eight remain on the scene. 

It’s clear that the cowboys outnumber Pinkerton, but the detectives work together flawlessly. All around, Dan sees detectives taking on five or six outlaws, and they seem almost evenly matched. 

Dan’s eyes move to Phil - the center of the shootout. He must have taken out at least one of the detectives that was circling him, because there is only one left by him. 

Phil is focused. Dead-set. His arms are stiff - one pointing a gun at the detective, the other resting protectively on the holster where he must have quickly stored his spare. 

Dan’s thoughts are interrupted, however, when he hears his own horse neigh. 

Quickly turning his head, he says that somehow, without his knowledge, a detective has sneaked around to them. 

Lennie is none the wiser - his eyes still closed, breath heavy as he tries to cope with the pain in his leg. 

Dan’s heart pounds like a jackhammer. He raises his gun - unsteady, his hands shaking. 

The detective looks him right in the eye, gun raised, face emotionless. 

Dan scrambles to his feet, careful to never take his eyes off the man.

“Don’t shoot,” he breathes, trying to make his voice sound formidable. 

The detective raises his eyebrows. Dan’s hands continue to shake. The detective steps forward, smile flickering over his face. Dan feels the sun on his skin, the dry air of the desert. 

Are his last words really going to be “don’t shoot”? What will they do with his body? Will his parents ever know what happened?

And then a shot rings out, and the detective drops his gun and brings both his hands to his side. 

Dan looks back to see Phil, sitting tall on his stallion, hands steady and gun smoking. 

Glancing around, Dan sees that the conflict is pretty much over. Most of the detectives are licking their wounds in the trees, and the couple that remain unharmed seem to be retreating as well. 

“No time to wait, Dan. Get Lennie on your horse, and take his. We need to move before they can regroup.”

Dan, still reeling from his near-death experience, simply nods. 

“Thank you,” he says, his voice sounding unlike him. 

Phil smiles, then turns back around and trots back towards the other men, probably telling them the same thing he did Dan. 

Dan leans over and tries to support Lennie enough for him to stand. If he’s honest, Lennie does most of the work, but Dan puts his good foot in the stirrup and helps him up. 

“Can’t believe I have to ride the captive’s horse,” Lennie says grumpily, but it seems more friendly than mean-spirited. 

Dan climbs onto Lennie’s blonde mare. He kicks the horse in the side a couple of times, and on the third time the horse starts moving. Seeing the other horses kick into gear, the mare speeds up, and soon Dan is riding with the other cowboys. 

 

It feels strange, being in the center of the crowd instead of on the outskirts. Some people shoot him funny looks, as if they think he doesn’t belong. The majority pay no attention to him at all, making him feel almost as though he’s part of the group. 

Again, he feels conflicted. Part of him loves this. The other, arguably more rational part, is terrified. 

They ride the rest of the day, weaving back and forth so much that Dan has absolutely no idea where they’re going. In fact, Phil is the only one who truly seems to know. 

By the end of the day, everybody is restless. They set up on the outskirts of a small town, and the boys decide to go to a bar. 

Dan doesn’t feel much like drinking. Besides, he’s not sure if he even has an invitation. 

Phil says he’d like to stay behind as well, and soon enough it’s only them and a couple men who had been wounded.

Dan doesn’t speak. He isn’t sure what to say. Had it not been for Phil, he probably wouldn’t even be standing here right now. 

Phil sits by the small fire that the men had made before they left. His legs are folded, his arms resting atop them and his chin on his arms. 

Despite the sky being dark, his hat still sits tall on his head. 

He turns and catches Dan’s eyes, smiling softly, then pulls himself up and dusts the sand off his jeans. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, walking over to where Dan is sitting.   
“Hey,” Dan answers back, confused.   
“You wanna thank me? I saved your life, in case you forgot.” Phil smiles jokingly as the words leave his mouth, but his eyes and stature seem grave.   
“Didn’t forget, actually. Already thanked you.” 

Phil nods, staring off into the distance with furrowed eyebrows. There’s nothing but sand and a couple odd bushes as far as the eye can see, but Phil still looks like he’s worried about something. After the day that they’ve had, Dan isn’t surprised. He’s been feeling the same way. 

“I was thinking…” Phil starts, then trails off. He speaks to Dan, but never takes his eyes off the horizon line. 

“Yes?” Dan prompts after a moment of silence. 

“If something like that were to happen again,” Phil speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully, “You should be able to defend yourself.”

Dan nods. In the back of his head, he wonders how long the cowboys are planning to keep him before they follow through and sell him out as a railroad worker or try to squeeze some money out of his family to have him back. 

Enough time to warrant being able to defend himself, then. Too bad that Dan is awful with a gun. 

“I can’t shoot.” He asserts to Phil.  
“Practice.” Phil replies easily.   
“How can I practice if I don’t know what to do in the first place?”  
“I’ll teach you, obviously.”

Dan looks up at that, and sees that Phil has turned to look at him. 

“Okay.”  
“Okay, then, get up.”  
“What, now?”  
“Good a time as any.”

Phil extends his hand, and Dan grabs it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. 

“What about the wounded men? They’re asleep,” Dan says.  
“They’re cowboys. They can sleep through gunshots.” Phil grins again. 

“I don’t have a gun,” Dan is running out of arguments.   
“Well, good thing we have a couple dozen spare.”

And, with that, Phil walks over to the horses and throws open a saddle bag, pulling out a couple guns and twirling them around in his hands with a sense of familiarity. He seems to decide on a smaller one, with a rounded, rusted top. 

He puts the rest back in the bag, then closes it and buckles it back. 

He tosses it through the air, and Dan only just has time to reflect on how dangerous that is before it, miraculously, lands in his open hands. 

“Nice catch,” Phil beckons Dan over to him. 

The gun feels weird in Dan’s hand. He tries to remember when the last time he’d shot a gun had been. He remembers his dad making him try to shoot a rabbit when he was fifteen - had it really been that long since he had last shot one?

Phil, on the other hand, handles himself with an easy grace. His finger rests lightly on the trigger, both hands on the gun to steady it. 

Dan tries to copy him, but it feels awkward. 

Phil laughs, prompting Dan to realize that the gun is pointed backwards. In his defense, it’s dark. And he’s nervous. 

And Phil seems to sense this, because he tosses his gun down and comes over to Dan, taking the gun from him and turning it the right way around. 

He then walks around behind Dan, wrapping his arms around Dan’s shoulders to guide Dan’s arms to their correct position. 

Phil’s chest presses into Dan’s back, and Dan catches the scent of firewood as Phil turns the slightest bit so that he can straighten out Dan’s left arm. 

It’s silent. Dan is absolutely sure that Phil can hear his heart beating. In fact, it’s beating so loud that Dan would not be surprised if he woke up the sleeping men.

For some strange reason, his mind flashes back to that night, when he was leaving the saloon and saw those two men in the alley. Heat rises to his cheeks, and Dan finds himself glad that it’s dark. He isn’t sure why he’s blushing. He doesn’t _like_ Phil. He doesn’t like him at all, some days. After all, Phil had kidnapped him - no matter how nice he is to Dan. 

And Dan certainly isn’t… Well, he likes girls. After all, he had liked Katy and Gina and Stacy. He had even kissed Stacy when he was thirteen. So it must just be his nervousness about shooting that’s making him have this reaction to Phil touching him. 

“Alright…” Phil mutters, pulling his arms and body away from Dan and stepping back to make sure he had positioned him right. 

Dan’s arms were beginning to hurt from holding up the gun for so long. In his defense, wiping counters doesn’t really do wonders for your upper-body. 

“Good.” Phil nods. 

“So… what do I do?”   
“Pull the trigger,” Phil chuckles, “Aim for that bush.”

Dan aims as best he can, then looks back at Phil for confirmation. 

“Are you waiting on my approval?” Phil says, eyebrows raised in anticipation.   
“Well, yeah…”  
“Pull the trigger, then.”

Dan looks back at the bush that he’s supposed to hit, takes a deep breath, and tries to steady his shaking hands. Glancing down at his arms, then back at his target, he squeezes his fingers down on the trigger. 

The noise is louder than Dan expected, and the gun kicks back, making Dan stumble backwards. 

Embarrassingly enough, he trips over his own feet and lands on his ass. 

He looks over to Phil, expecting to be made fun of, but he finds that the older man is nodding and smiling. 

“Well, you look pretty fucking dumb, but you shot the target.”

Dan can’t help but smile. 

“Try again.” Phil commands, and Dan scrambles to his feet. 

He tries to position his arms in the way that Phil did it, and replicates it pretty well. He can’t lie, he’s a little proud of himself. 

“Aim for the same bush?” Dan asks.   
“Yeah,” Phil returns, “hold on.”

Phil comes over, standing behind Dan. 

“Something wrong with my positioning?”  
“No, ‘s pretty good, actually. I’m gonna steady you so that you don’t fall over again.”

Ah. There’s the slight that Dan had been waiting for. 

He looks at the bush, breathes in, and pulls the trigger again. This time, he tries to absorb the shock of the gun with his arms, but he finds himself falling back a little bit even still. 

Phil, as promised, steadies him, his arms resting beside Dan’s as he pushes Dan back onto his feet. 

Dan finds himself blushing again, despite his best efforts. 

“Again,” Phil says, and Dan gets back into position. 

 

It’s been about an hour when Phil announces that, in his opinion, Dan has gone from miserable to alright. 

“If I had more patience, I would keep at it,” Phil says, “but you’re heavy.”

Dan shrugs. If he’s honest, he thinks he could keep upright if he tried. The last few times, he had found himself stumbling back on purpose so that Phil would catch him. 

“My arms hurt,” Dan complains.  
“You’re just weak,” Phil fires back, holding out his hand for Dan’s gun. 

“I don't get to keep it?”  
“How will I explain it to my men if you decide to shoot everyone and escape?”  
“I won’t.”  
“I know,” Phil says, “but they don’t.”

Dan gives the gun to Phil. 

It’s a strange reminder of how much of an outsider Dan still is. He might not have ropes around his wrists anymore, but he’s still a captive in their eyes. 

He decides to go to sleep before the rest of the men get back from the bar. 

He makes his way over to his bed (a piece of tarp), and lies down. It seems like as soon as he closes his eyes, he’s asleep. 

Usually, the sound of the men packing up in the morning wakes Dan up, but today he wakes up to silence. He sits up, blinking the sleep out of his eyes and yawning slowly. Nobody is awake, which is unusual. Even when the boys stay out late drinking, Phil still makes them wake up early and pack up. 

Today, he must have let them sleep in, because he sits at his same place around the fire. Phil looks lost in thought, his arms crossed and his legs pulled almost up to his chest. 

Dan wonders what he’s thinking about. 

Probably something about yesterday. The cowboys had escaped the detectives successfully, but shootouts on that scale seemed to be a rare event. Some men were wounded, and the gang had moved much slower. 

Dan lies back down, letting his eyes close to rest a little bit more. His mind wanders, and he finds himself thinking about stumbling back into Phil last night. 

The thought quickly leaves his mind, of course, but he can’t help but to remember the scent of firewood. 

He only realizes that his short rest had turned into more sleep upon waking up. The men are packing up now, and Dan moves to put his bed away. 

“Why didn’t he wake us up earlier? Thought we were moving today,” Dan overhears a cowboy say. 

“Guess he thought we couldn’t handle it after yesterday.”  
“Just cus he was scared doesn’t mean we all were. That man is soft, I’ll tell you that.”  
“He’s a good enough leader, though.”  
“If he really was, men wouldn’t have been wounded yesterday. He woulda seen those detectives before they started shooting at us.”  
“Guess you’re right.”  
“I know I am.”

Dan finds himself wanting to defend Phil, but he doubts it would help at all. In fact, it might make them dislike Phil more - Dan still being around had become a point of contention within the group. 

Soon enough, they’re on their horses and are riding like normal. 

Dan is still riding Lennie’s horse while the older man recovers. He rides in the middle of the pack, surrounded by the outlaws, and somehow it makes him feel like even more of a stranger. 

“Where are we, Lester?” Someone asks.   
“Lakahonna County,” Phil answers easily. 

It will always be a mystery to Dan how Phil knows exactly where they are and exactly where they’re going all the time. 

“Pretty close to White Pines, no?” Someone else calls out. 

Dan’s ears perk up at this. White Pines is his county. At the center of it is his town, with his mom and his bed and the saloon. 

Phil doesn’t answer.

“Lester!” The same man calls out.   
“What is it, Walter?” Phil asks, his voice sounding annoyed.   
“We’re close to White Pines!”  
“And?”  
“And we can get our damn ransom!”

Shouts of approval go up in the crowd. Dan shifts in his saddle. They talk about him like he isn’t there, like he’s no more than a piece of meat that they’re anxious to sell. 

“It’s too far out of our way,” Phil answers shortly.   
“We’re in no hurry!”  
“And how do you know that, Walter? You didn’t even know where we were a minute ago!”

A couple people in the crowd chuckle. 

“One thing I do know is that this boy is serving no purpose to us, and you’re letting him ride up with us, eating off our plates and sleeping on our beds! He’s slowing us down.”

Some of the outlaws murmur in agreement. Dan, red in his cheeks, looks down. 

“Lest you forget that if Dan wasn’t here, I would still have a gaping hole in my shoulder, and we would’ve had to leave Lennie in the middle of the desert,” Phil speaks slowly and clearly, but the annoyance in his voice is apparent. 

“Yeah, so he’s served his purpose. Why can’t we just make a profit off him?”  
“I am your leader, Walter, and you will follow my orders.”

Walter doesn’t speak after that, and the other outlaws stay quiet as well. 

Dan runs his fingers along the reins of his horse, wondering why Phil wants to keep him around. It would be a lot easier to just demand money from the sheriff or from his mother and drop him back home.

For some reason, Dan is happy at the thought that Phil wants him to stay. 

The sun begins to set, and the boys don’t stop riding.

Dan feels the breeze on his arms and finds himself wanting Phil’s arms to wrap around them and keep him warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> i always appreciate comments and kudos !! check out my other stuff if you'd like x


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy sunday!

They haven’t moved camp in three days. 

Before, there hadn’t been a night where they had stayed in the same place, but for the past few days, Dan had woken up to see Phil in hushed conversations with other outlaws. 

Nobody had made any move to pack up, apparently on orders from Phil himself. 

Phil hadn’t talked to him in about a week. In fact, the last time that they had truly spoken was the night that Phil attempted to show Dan how to shoot. 

Dan, strangely enough, misses their banter. 

He finds himself grudgingly understanding why Phil won’t speak to him, though. 

Dan’s very presence in the gang had been causing controversy for over a month - and it’s only gotten worse since Phil refused to drop Dan off in White Pines. 

There’s a clear divide in the group between the men who would follow Phil’s orders no matter what, and those who question him endlessly about why Dan is still here, and why he’s getting special treatment; riding a horse as if he was a real part of the group. 

So Dan supposes that Phil’s reluctance to talk to him is an attempt to quell some anger in the crowd. 

It gets lonely, though. At night, Dan finds himself lying awake, thinking about that night outside the bar, or the ones back at camp - alone together. 

It’s funny how, in the short amount of time they’ve spent together, Dan has come to rely on him. Even… trust him. 

Dan never envisioned himself trusting an outlaw, but trusting Phil seems almost obvious. 

It’s early morning, hot and dry, and a couple clouds float overhead as Dan slowly wakes up. 

He listens for the noise that used to accompany early mornings - packing up, feeding the horses, and putting out the fire - but he hears nothing. 

Looks like they’ll be staying wherever they are for another day. 

Dan feels like he’s invisible lately. Instead of solving the problem, the boys are content to just pretend like he doesn’t exist. 

Phil and the boys had been going to the bar, joking about how many women they could kiss and how many drinks they could down. 

They all waltz back into camp long after the sun goes down, tipsy and loud. They wake Dan up, and he listens to their conversations as he tries, in vain, to go back to sleep. 

“ - was a kicker.”  
“You should know, seeing as you had about ten!”  
“Eleven, eleven.”  
“Oh, I should’ve known, you -”

“ - run so fast, George!”  
“Had to avoid paying for that table somehow!”  
“Think they’ll let you back in tomorrow?”  
“They’d be foolish not to! I was one hell of an attraction!”

“None so much as ol’ Lester, isn’t that right, chief?!”  
“Settle, settle.”  
“Tomorrow, we’re gonna -”

Dan almost wants to go with them, some nights, and witness firsthand the stories that they come back ranting about. 

He isn’t welcome, though. Half the boys would occupy their night glaring at him. And it would put Phil in a tough position. 

So, unless they leave this place soon, Dan is looking at a lot of falling asleep early and waking up in the middle of the night. 

It’s easier to pretend to be asleep than to be forced to be in the midst of a group that he isn’t a true part of. 

He closes his eyes, hoping that he’ll fall asleep for a couple more hours. 

 

When he does wake up, he wakes up to find that most of the horses are gone, along with most of the people. 

For a second, Dan thinks that the boys have left him - but the camp is still up, and saddle bags still lie on the ground. 

It’s strange how a couple weeks ago, Dan would’ve given anything for them to leave him, and now the thought fills him with dread. 

The air is strangely cold, and Dan makes his way to the fire. 

Lennie and the other men who were wounded in the shootout sit near it, talking amongst themselves. In a couple days, their wounds will have healed enough for them to fully function again. 

Lennie smiles at Dan as he sits down a couple feet away from the group. Dan smiles back, grateful for the gesture. 

He curls his legs up to his chest, letting the fire heat him up. 

It’s gets hot quickly, and soon enough Dan is standing up and wandering away. 

“You lookin’ for Phil?” He hears a voice behind him, and turns back to see that it was Lennie who spoke. 

Nobody really addresses Dan, especially after Phil refused to send him home, so it’s rare for someone to speak to him. 

“No,” Dan replies - then, realizing that this might be a chance for him to get information about where everyone is, “But where is everyone?”

“Scouting mission. We couldn’t go, seeing as we’re wounded and all,” Lennie replies. 

Dan is surprised by the friendliness of his tone. And the cowboys around Lennie don’t seem bothered by Dan either. 

“Thanks,” Dan says.   
“Want a drink?” Another cowboy offers. 

Dan is blown away by what seems to be his sudden acceptance into the gang. 

“Sure.”

The whiskey burns in his throat, and he struggles to not screw up his face. 

“You’re causing a lot of trouble, huh?” A cowboy chuckles at Dan, though his tone makes the loaded question seem almost playful.   
“Guess so. Being a captive and all,” Dan’s attempt at humor is met with friendly smiles.   
“If it makes you feel any better, we’re fine with keeping you around,” Lennie says, and, miraculously, nobody disagrees. 

Dan grins, surprised at their words. 

“You might want to brush up on your gun work, though.”

Dan blushes, ducking his head for a second. 

“I will,” Dan agrees. 

The cowboys continue talking, moving on to topics that Dan can’t pretend he fully understands. He is content to be an idle part of the group - he is thankful to be part of the group at all. 

As the sun drifts higher in the sky, the boys talk less and resolve themselves to finishing the whiskey. Dan takes a couple more sips, relishing the warm feeling in his throat. 

He closes his eyes, letting his mind wander in the silence. 

Until the silence is broken by the unmistakable sound of hooves on sand. 

Dan turns around to see Phil on his horse, accompanied by another cowboy. He’s covered in dust, and he wears a grim expression. 

He makes no move to engage any of the cowboys in conversation, instead leading his horse over to the others and dealing with his saddle bags. 

The other cowboy jumps off his horse, coming over to the group. He raises his eyebrows at Dan’s presence, but doesn’t dispute it. 

“What’s going on, Ral?”  
“He’s pissed. Walter won’t get off his ass about…” 

He trails off, but it’s clear he’s referring to Dan. 

“He left them?”  
“Yeah, told them Toby was in charge.”  
“Damn.”  
“Walter’s been like this for awhile - goin’ behind Phil’s back. Reckon Phil knows it, too.”  
“Bet Walter was just waiting for the right fuckin’ time to undermine him, that son of a bitch…”  
“Yeah, well.”

There’s a heavy moment of silence. 

“What’s your name, boy?” The cowboy asks, and Dan looks up after a beat to see he’s talking to him. 

“Dan.”

“Okay then, Dan, mind puttin’ up my horse? I don’t like being around Lester when he gets like this.”  
“Sure…”

Dan’s never put up a horse before - but he’s not about to refuse the obvious olive branch that the cowboy - Ral, Dan remembers - has extended. 

So he takes the reins of Ral’s silky brown mare and leads her over to the rest of the horses. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Phil tying his stallion to a post which they had grounded upon their arrival a couple days ago. 

Dan moves to do the same, trying to copy the knot that Phil tied. 

“You’re hopeless,” Dan hears Phil say - his voice neither friendly or unpleasant, instead a perfect monotone.   
“Never done this.”  
“I know.”

Phil’s side presses against Dan as his practiced hands tie the complicated knot with ease. 

“Thanks.”

Phil doesn’t reply. He stares at his boots, covered in dust. Dan turns his head down too, wishing that he could read Phil’s thoughts. 

He watches Phil’s boots move back to his horse, watches his hands untie the knot that he had just tied. 

He looks up and sees that Phil is staring at him. 

“I’m going to go on a ride,” he says, with new resolve, “Come with me.”

Dan can’t tell if it’s a question or an order. He moves to untie the blonde horse that he had been riding for the past week or so. 

He holds her reins in his hand, turns around to see that Phil is already leading his horse away. 

Dan jogs to keep up. 

Once they get a ways past the other horses, Phil swings up onto his stallion, one hand securing his hat on his head. 

Dan does the same, albeit a lot less gracefully. 

Phil doesn’t speak, he just begins to ride - though Dan notes that he’s riding slower than usual so that he can catch up. 

Dan kicks his horse a couple times, and soon enough he has caught up. 

He’s unsure of what to say - unsure of why he’s even here. There’s a couple minutes of silence. 

Finally, Phil breaks it. 

“Sorry,” he says.   
“For what?” Dan replies.  
“Know the boys haven’t been too welcoming to you and all.”  
“Oh.”

Another pause. 

“I’m not gonna ransom you off,” Phil says simply. He sounds like he’s saying it more to himself than to Dan.   
“Maybe you should,” Dan replies.   
“You want me to?”

Whether or not he wanted to leave - Dan had been thinking on that for over a month. 

“I’m not sure,” he answers, and then - “I don’t think so.”

He doesn’t mean to say it, it just kind of tumbles out of his mouth. But now that’s it out there, Dan feels no real need to take it back. 

“Then I won’t.” 

They ride for a while longer, the sun slowly dipping in the sky. 

“You worked in a saloon before this, then?” Phil asks.  
“Yeah. My mom’s.”  
“Did you like it?”  
“No, not really. Hated it, actually. I wanted to be a sheriff.”

Phil chuckles, “Ironic.”

“Yeah. And you?”  
“What about me?”  
“What did you do… before this.”

Phil looks up at the sky. His face is lit up by the sun - for someone so young, he looks like he’s lived a thousand different lives. 

“Well, before anything?”  
“Guess so.”

He breathes in, seeming to resolve himself to speak. 

“It’s a long story.”  
“We’ve been riding a while.”

~

Phil grew up in Colorado. His family lived in a small mining town. Their house was really more of a shack - one room with no bathroom, no kitchen, and no beds. 

His mother got sick from the fumes of the mine. She would leave to go get water and come back having a coughing fit. 

Phil’s sister, Jenny, cried every time. 

Soon, Phil was the one who would leave to get water. 

When he was thirteen or so - they didn’t celebrate birthdays, so Phil had to do his best to keep track - there was a collapse in the mine where his dad was working. 

His mother cried her eyes out, but Phil secretly thought that she was more sad about losing their tiny home than she was about losing her husband.

They moved to another county, started living with Phil’s aunt. 

As soon as he turned 16, his mom and aunt made him go out and get a job. He only person working in the house was his uncle, and he had a low paying paper delivery job. 

Phil began working as a deputy for the sheriff.

The sheriff was a tough, old man named Frank Graves. His family enjoyed the most wealth in the county. Their big, white house sat on top of the hill.

The reason he was so rich, though, was not his measly state salary. He spent a great lot of time investigating crimes that happened to the wealthy and their family. And, somehow, he could never find the time to investigate a crime unless he was “paid upfront”.

Phil hated it. He would do his best to try to solve crimes that happened to people of less wealth, but sneaking around Graves’ back was exhausting, and he would get in incredible amounts of trouble every time he was caught doing something as small as talking to people who had been wronged but had not yet paid. 

But he kept working, suffered through it - and made enough money to support his family. 

Though, if he was being honest, the only reason he kept the job was for his sister - two years younger than him. 

She was beautiful, with long, red hair, freckles, and blue eyes. She was the talk of the town - outgoing and funny. 

Phil would do anything to protect her. 

One day, he stayed at the sheriff’s office late, not wanting to go home and have to talk with his mother, aunt, and uncle. 

Later, he would tear himself apart for not going home. 

When he did, he found a group of people huddled outside his house, heard his mother screaming - in hysterics. 

The crowd saw him, and parted, leaving him to look at a sight that he knows he will never be able to forget. 

His beautiful sister lay on the ground, blood matting her hair, blue eyes paralyzed in what must have been the shock of her last moments. 

His mother’s cries sounded distorted. It seemed like everyone in the crowd disappeared. Phil turned around quickly - walking, running, sprinting as far away as possible. 

He found himself at a bar. 

In fact, he found himself at a bar almost every day in the next few months. 

He skipped work - solving the petty crimes of the wealthy meant even less than it had. Phil wasn’t sure he could even face the sheriff without getting in a fight - there would be no investigation into who killed Jenny because his family could not afford it. 

Eventually, he got fired, much to the disdain of his aunt. 

His mother didn’t seem to exist anymore. She was selfish, awful - but if there was one thing she cared about, it was Jenny. 

Instead of listening to his aunt berate him and watch the ghost version of his mother sit silently, Phil spent the night wherever he could. 

He worked odd jobs, doing whatever he needed to to get money. Finally, he saved enough to buy a horse. She was scrawny, slow, patchy - but she could ride. 

And Phil rode her away. 

Finally, he found himself in the desert, going town to town and spending the nights at saloons that he would leave before paying his bill. There was about a year of this - every night spent at a bar, watching the dancers, every morning spent riding off to wherever Phil thought there would be another place to sleep.

It was at one such bar that he first met Jack. 

Jack, too, had run away from home. Jack, too, would leave the saloon before paying for his drinks. 

He had lost two fingers on his right hand when he worked in the mines for a year, and introduced himself to Phil as “Three-Fingered Jack”. 

The two became a pair, and suddenly life became a lot more exciting for Phil. 

Jack had left his home in Montana when he was 14. He had worked in the mines in Colorado, just like Phil’s father, for a year. When he was 16, he a couple boys from the mines had left. They had formed a sort of odd gang, stealing money from small businesses and using it to buy better guns, horses, places to sleep. 

But the gang had dispersed about a year before Jack met Phil, and his wild energy drew Phil to the tales he told. 

They met another boy, Charlie, smoking outside of a bank. They had asked him for a cigarette, and that, as they say, was that. 

It was them three against the world. 

Phil Lester, Jack Dunlop, and Charlie Stiles. Their odd little gang became a sort-of folktale in northern Nevada. 

Phil still chases the high of riding through the desert with the boys, racing to the horizon line, lying down on hot sand dunes, shooting cacti, shouting into the sky just because nobody could hear but them. 

Jack was “Three-Fingered Jack”, and he never told Phil and Charlie the real reason why he was missing a pinky and a ring finger. 

Charlie was “Snake-eyes” because he never, ever missed a shot. 

And Phil was “Sundance.” Jack gave him the name. He never told him why. 

In the back of his head, Phil knew that this unadulterated happiness couldn’t possibly last. And he was right - the gang had, on a whim, decided to stand up a train that they were passing. 

Charlie, Snake-eyes, had gone to the front of the train - but before he could even draw a weapon, the conductor shot him in the chest. 

His body fell off his horse in what seemed like slow-motion. He hit the ground with a sickening crack, and let out a scream that drowned out all of Phil’s other thoughts for weeks and weeks afterwards. 

His horse spooked and shot off into the desert. 

Phil jumped down from his horse to try to get Charlie up, but by the time he got to his friends’ side he could tell that he wouldn’t make it. 

And Jack, carefree Jack, sat on his horse, frozen. 

He didn’t say anything as Phil sobbed. They sat there for hours as Phil tried to dig a grave. 

That night, he couldn’t sleep. He stayed up late to the tune of Jack’s silent cries. 

After that, things were different between them. There was no more boundless energy - just a seemingly insurmountable block between them. 

They stayed together for six months after that. 

The only thing Phil has from that time, besides the memories in oversaturated detail, is his old gun. The boys had carved their nicknames into the side with a pocket knife. 

It had been over three years - ever since, Phil had been riding through the desert, picking up rascal boys who wanted to ride in a cowboy gang and showing them the ropes. 

~

“So, that’s that,” Phil finishes. 

Dan isn’t sure what to say. The story did take a long time to tell - the sun is beginning to set, and the boys had turned around somewhere in the middle and started riding back to camp. 

His earlier sentiment about Phil living a thousand lives seems even more appropriate. 

“It’s sad,” Dan says, immediately regretting the words as soon as they leave his mouth. 

Luckily, Phil laughs. “Yeah, it is. But you shouldn’t feel bad for me. I’m happy with this.”  
“Hmm.” Dan agrees. 

They don’t speak again until they arrive back to camp. It’s the nice kind of silence, the kind that feels peaceful instead of suffocating. 

It serves as a perfect contrast to their arrival at camp - which is more chaotic than Dan has ever seen it before.

Phil rides in first, sitting tall on his horse. He steers his horse next to the fire, flames lighting up his silhouette. “Boys!” He calls, and everyone seemingly goes silent. 

“What the hell is going on?”

A thousand voices seem to speak at once, and Phil raises his hand for silence. 

He points to one cowboy, a man with long blond hair, to speak. 

“Sir, when the men came back, they wanted to know where you were. An’ they asked Lennie and Ral, and they told ‘em that you was on a ride with the kid.”

Phil nods for him to continue. 

“Walter was real mad, said that this proves that you’re a bad guy. Said you care about the kid more than us. We all told him he was wrong, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. We couldn’t do anything, seeing as we was -”

“What has he done?”

“Well, sir, he left.”

Shouts go up again as seemingly everybody wants to voice their opinion on the matter. But Phil waves his hands for silence. 

“Did anybody leave with him?”

“Yeah, about a dozen guys.”

Phil nods. 

“Well? What the hell are we gonna do?”  
“For now?” Phil answers, “We’re gonna get some sleep.”

“But, sir -”

“Jesse, I appreciate your concern, really, but I can deal with this on my own. I’d rather y’all rest, because we should be leaving tomorrow morning. Been in one place too long.”

The boys murmur to themselves for a moment, then move to set out their canvases and sleep. 

The moon hangs overhead, the fire crackles. Dan gets off his horse, moving towards the pole and attempting the knot that Phil did earlier. 

It’s not perfect, but it’ll work. 

He moves to set up his own canvas, lying down and looking at the stars overhead. 

He steals a glance over at Phil, who still sits up straight on his horse. 

Phil watches as the last few cowboys go to sleep, then moves his eyes to the horizon, absolutely still in the night air. 

Dan watches him until he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, i love and appreciate your comments and kudos :)


	6. chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while ouch sorry

It had been a week, give or take, since some of the outlaws had left the camp. Every night since then, they had moved to a new place. 

Phil was barely talking anymore - not just to Dan, but to everyone. He would spend hours standing, staring at the horizon as if he was waiting for something to come out. 

And maybe he was. Dan could tell from the bags under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders that Phil was worried. 

Now that Dan knows everything that Phil’s been through, he’s amazed that this isn’t the way that Phil is every day. To lose so many people… Dan can’t imagine it. 

At the same time, a part of him is jealous of Phil. 

The tragedies that he had suffered were so tragic because of the deep, genuine love and friendship that Phil felt for those he had lost. 

Dan, on the other hand, hasn’t ever felt that. Not for his drunkard mother, or his barely-there father. Not for the boys he grew up with, not for the couple of girls he had kissed. 

What scares him is that he thinks he might feel it for Phil. Well, not it. But maybe a version of it. 

And maybe that’s why he finds himself worried about him. No matter how early he wakes up, Phil is up before him. No matter how long he stays up, Phil stays up later. He’s beginning to think that Phil isn’t sleeping at all. 

For the first time, though, the cowboys are talking to him like he’s their equal. They engage him in real conversation, they don’t look at him funny when he sits down near them or starts talking. 

With Walter and the people who agreed with him gone, nobody cares about Dan’s presence. 

He’s been up for a couple hours now, and is packing saddle bags along with a couple others. 

The wounded men have healed enough to be able to ride normally, so Lennie has taken his horse back from Dan. Luckily, the boys show him to a horse who one of the men that ran away had left behind. She’s a tall Appaloosa, and Dan falls in love with her gentle nature and the dark colors of her coat. 

He strokes her mane absentmindedly as he adjusts the stirrups. 

“Dan,” One of the boys, Wyatt, says in greeting as he undoes his own horse from the pole.   
“Morning. Is Phil still out there?”  
“Yup. Worried about him, but he would hate us if we tried to tell him what to do.”  
“I don’t think he’s sleeping.”  
“I don’t either, kid, but there’s not a lot we can do,” Wyatt sighs, patting his horse.   
“Couldn’t someone just talk to him?”  
“Well, if anyone’s gonna have luck with that, it’d be you. Think he’s talked to you more in the past couple months than he’s talked to most of us in a year.”

Dan doesn’t know what to make of that. He laughs half-heartedly. 

Soon enough, the sun is higher in the sky, and everyone is on their horses except Phil. He still stands on the outskirts of where the camp had been, staring off into the distance. 

“Lester!” Someone calls out, and Phil turns around blearily. 

He shakes himself, striding across the sand and pulling himself onto his horse. 

“Right, boys…” He says, but his voice lacks the usual kick. 

They ride, but everyone seems to be going slower than usual. The boys exchange worried looks at Phil, who bounces around on his saddle with none of his usual discipline. 

His reins are slack in his hands. 

“Phil, we’re close to Geneva,” A cowboy riding a couple people down from Dan calls out.   
“We’re not going to Geneva,” Phil replies, “We can’t rest.”

The cowboys exchange looks, obviously worried about their leader. 

“You need to rest,” the same cowboy says, his tone almost pleading. 

Phil doesn’t respond. 

They keep riding, the sun getting high in the sky. It’s hot, dry, and sweat rolls down Dan’s chest. 

Dan’s foot comes loose from his stirrup, and he leans down to adjust it. He screws his face up in concentration, trying to still his body on the saddle, when he hears a faint groan. 

His horse stops abruptly, making him gasp as he snaps his head up. 

At first, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Then he notices that all the cowboys are looking at the ground. 

Phil had fallen off his horse - something that seems to be surprising everybody else as much as it’s surprising Dan. 

And he isn’t getting up. 

The outlaws are frozen, eyes wide and mouths ajar as they stare at their invincible leader passed out in the sand. 

Dan jumps off his horse, grabbing the reins loosely in his hand. Seeing Dan move, the rest of the boys snap into action, a burst of noise going up in the crowd. 

“He’s probably dehydrated,” someone calls out, “It’s hot as a bitch out here.”  
“We can get him in the shade, there’s a treeline a couple miles behind us.”  
“Right.”

Dan leans down and looks at Phil, whose eyes are eerily halfway closed. Lennie jumps off his horse, clapping Dan on the back. 

“Get back up. I’ll take him on my horse,” he says. 

Dan nods, putting his foot in the stirrup and swinging up onto his horse. Lennie pulls Phil up onto his horse, putting him in front so that he can secure him. 

Dan remembers when Phil did that to him, in that first week when he had tried to run away. 

The boys turn back, riding to the bit of woods that Wyatt had seen a while back. Every couple minutes, Dan steals a glance at Phil on Lennie’s horse. He’s half-awake, bleary, murmuring things that Dan can’t hear.   
Finally, they reach the treeline. The shade feels good on Dan’s skin, but he’s preoccupied with worrying about Phil. 

They lay him down under a tree, and the boys lead the horses into a small valley to tie them up. 

Dan swings off his horse, handing the reins to another boy and moving towards Lennie and Phil. 

“Is he… Okay?”  
“Yeah, think so. He just needs to rest.”

Dan looks at Phil, whose eyes are open but who isn’t speaking. 

“Would you mind sitting with him, Dan? I needa go speak with the boys about where we wanna set up tonight - Phil’s in no mindset to do any a’ that.”  
“Yeah, I will.”

Lennie nods, getting up and going to join the other boys, who are talking in hushed voices as they tie up the horses. 

Phil is propped up on the tree, sweat glistening on his bare chest, breathing hard. Dan sits next to him and looks at his feet. He doesn’t know what to say. Phil doesn’t speak either - not even acknowledging the fact that Dan is there. 

They sit there, together but not talking, for what Dan would guess to be about a half hour. The rest of the boys are, no doubt, making some sort of plan for the coming night. Dan isn’t angry that he isn’t a part of the meeting. 

He’d rather make sure Phil’s alright. 

The sun starts to dip in the sky, and Lennie comes over and leans down to talk to Dan. 

“You want to tap out?”  
“No, I’m fine.”  
“Suit yourself. We’re gonna sleep here tonight - don’ want to mess Lester up too much.”

Phil grunts. “We need to keep moving.”

Lennie turns to directly address him. “No, we don’. And you need to sleep, sir.” 

Phil shakes his head, but doesn’t protest. 

Lennie turns back to Dan, but as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, one of the boys rides through the trees. Lennie straightens up. 

“What’s going on, Mick?”  
“Deputies. Outside. They know we’re in here - someone must’a tipped them off.”

Lennie’s face flickers into fear for a second, then quickly turns stony. “Everybody hide. Horses should be safe - they’re in the valley.”

“Now!”

Cowboys dart deeper into the woods, climbing trees and crawling into whatever crevices they can find. Phil tries to get up, but Lennie motions to Dan to block him. 

Dan puts his hand over Phil’s chest, pushing into his skin. 

“That bush here - with him,” Lennie hisses, before turning and running soundlessly out of sight. 

Dan grabs Phil’s waist, helping him get to his feet. 

“I don’t need -” he tries to protest, but Dan cuts him off with a soft shushing noise. 

They crawl into the bush, which turns out to be a pretty good place to hide. A couple branches had caved in the middle, so there’s a little hollow place where they can sit. Phil’s limbs tangle with Dan’s - his shoulder in Dan’s neck. 

They sit like this, trying to be absolutely quiet, for a couple minutes before they hear hoofprints and hushed voices enter the woods. 

“ - said they’d be in here, no?”  
“I don’t see anyone?”

Dan looks through the branches to see boots drop off a horse right in front of where they stand. 

He opens his mouth, about to gasp, when Phil’s hand comes up to his mouth and covers it. Dan’s heart starts to race. He’s not sure whether it’s a result of the police in front of them or the fact that Phil is so, so close to him. 

“It’s okay,” he hears Phil say, so faintly that Dan almost thinks he imagines it. 

It’s strange how two words from Phil can make him feel ten times better instantly. It suddenly occurs to Dan that he trusts Phil more than he has trusted anyone else. 

The boots begin to walk away. 

“Mighta been lying to get us off their asses, huh?”  
“Maybe.”

The voices slowly fade away.

Dan finds his hand in Phil’s. He doesn’t remember when that happened. He feels like he should. 

He feels Phil’s bare chest against his. 

“They’re gone,” he breathes. 

Dan squeezes Phil’s hands. No reason why. He just thought it might make him feel better. 

It does. 

 

He realizes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for your comments and kudos they mean the world! & also sorry that i keep not updating i honestly just forget sometimes haha but i hope you enjoyed this x


	7. chapter seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok... so yea its been a while. but i can't forget about this fr because im so excited for the twists and turns that its going to take! so even if it takes a million years im going to finish it.

Dan wakes up early, looking up to see soft light filtering its way through the trees above him. He sits up, the air unusually chilly. He wraps his arms around his body, breathing in deeply. 

He looks to his right to see Phil’s sleeping form, chest moving up and down steadily with each passing breath. 

He’d fallen asleep before the outlaws even ate dinner or attempted to make a fire, and nobody had attempted to wake him - everyone was just relieved that he had fallen asleep at all. 

Dan can’t help but smile as he looks at Phil’s sleeping face. He looks peaceful for the first time in weeks - no lines on his face, no worry in his eyes. His hair falls haphazardly over his face, his hands folded lazily across his chest and fingers lightly brushing the grass under him. 

It seems strange to Dan how deep a connection he feels with Phil. It had been a little over two months since the older boy had dragged him out of his mother’s saloon with a gun pointed at his head, yet it feels like years ago. 

He remembers how hopeless he had felt in that first week, how much he had wanted to leave, to go back home. Now, he couldn’t imagine waking up in his tiny wooden room, spending the rhythm of his days and nights washing cups and becoming inadvertently hypnotized by the beads on a stranger’s dress. 

Waking up to the scent of the desert and stomping out the fire feels more like home than that ever did. 

This, Dan knows, is because of Phil. 

Phil, who has an incomprehensible edge that could charm even the worst of cynics to give up their world and become part of his. 

Phil, who commands with a single glance, whose word is both a law and a promise. 

Phil, who sees a ruby in a rock, who saw resolve in Dan’s fear. 

Dan knows that he feels something for Phil - something real. He should’ve realized it forever ago - even from that first day, that first week. Even when Dan had resented Phil, he still knew that there was something about him that demanded attention and joy. 

Dan rubs his eyes, yawning as the dry air around him rests still on his skin. He looks around to see that a couple of other boys are awake. They stand off to the side of the fire, talking in quiet voices. 

One of them, Billy, makes eye contact with Dan and smiles, beckoning him over. Dan smiles back, standing up and brushing some stray dirt off of his shoulder. He walks around the fire, glancing down at the dying embers. 

He steps easily into their circle, nodding hello. It feels natural, now, being with them, talking to them. 

“Morning, Dan,” Billy offers.  
“Morning.”

The boys are talking about an old train robbery - one they pulled off before Dan joined their motley crew. They joke around, making fun of each other, playfully punching shoulders and knocking hats off heads. Though Dan wasn't part of the heist they’re talking about, he doesn’t feel alienated at all. 

“Morning, boys,” a voice says behind him, and Dan turns to see Phil smirking at him. Dan smiles back shyly.

For the first time in weeks, Phil looks well-rested. There’s color back in his cheeks, and a brightness in his eyes that Dan has missed without ever truly realizing it was missing. His shirt is mostly unbuttoned, and his hair is a mess of curls and knots. 

Dan wills himself not to blush as Phil walks up to join their group, slotting himself in right next to Dan. 

Soon enough, they’re up on their horses, Phil leading the pack again, one hand on his hat and the other on the reins. 

All the laughter and cheers as they ride no longer seems strange to Dan. He can’t stop grinning. 

They pass a small town and decide to set up camp for the night outside it. The stars glow brightly against the deep black sky, and the warm air is blanket enough for Dan. Phil puts his hand on Dan’s shoulder as he says goodnight, and Dan feels the ghost of Phil’s touch as he falls asleep. 

They cycle through the desert and get up into the mountains, meadows spilling out in front of them seemingly endlessly. The days and nights swirl by in a mix of laughter, beer, riding, sleep, and getting distracted by Phil’s smile. 

The boys begin to stay up late, planning their next heist. They plan to rob a bank up in Colorado, a week’s ride away, a bank near a big gold mine. 

Phil catches Dan staring at him as he pours over their plans, and he cocks his head and smiles. 

The excitement is tangible, the air thick with excitement. Dan cannot stop watching Phil move. His easy charm shines through no matter what he’s doing. He is elegant in his recklessness, his wild words carefully chosen. 

One night, Dan lies down and Phil sits next to him, a beer in his hand. They barely speak. Phil holds out the bottle to Dan, who takes a swig and tries his best not to grimace at the bitter taste. Phil laughs softly, his hands absentmindedly picking at the tall grass. 

“Two months,” he says to the night sky.   
“More than that,” Dan counters.

There’s a pause. 

“Do you want to leave?” Phil asks, still not making eye contact with Dan.   
“No,” Dan answers easily, reaching down and brushing Phil’s hand lightly.   
“Alright,” Phil says, finally turning to look Dan in the eyes. His gaze is less carefree than usual. He opens his mouth to speak, then shakes his head and sighs. 

“What?” Dan asks softly.

Phil lies down on his back, breathing in. Dan follows suit, letting his eyes close. He thinks he hears Phil say something, but before he can ask what it was, he falls into sleep. 

 

The morning of their bank heist would be a normal morning, but the raw energy in the air sets it apart. They ride into the town in the early morning, riding through the uneven streets with a haughty gait. 

The bank is at the bookend of the main street, and as they begin to get closer, Dan’s heart starts to hammer. They’ve been over Phil’s ingenious plan so many times that Dan could repeat it in his sleep, but his hands still shake as he directs his horse down towards a river that runs behind the stack of shops at the center of the town. 

Lennie and Ral ride behind him, and they tie up their horses in a slight valley, making sure that they’re well hidden. 

Lennie grins at Dan. “Ready?”

Dan laughs. “No.”

Lennie laughs too, wrapping a rope around Dan’s hands and tying it into a complex knot. Dan breathes in, trying to calm his nerves. Lennie ties Ral’s hands behind his back as well, then takes both of them by the shoulder and leads them back up to the street. 

“Alright, just like we talked about,” Lennie says, nodding in reassurance at Dan.   
“Right.”

They walk down the street, Lennie being less gentle with him now that they are in broad daylight. Only a couple of people are walking down the street, and they pause to stare in horror. In the near distance, the man standing guard outside the bank reaches into his waistband for his gun. 

Dan has no problem pretending to be scared out of his mind as Lennie shoves them along. 

As the bank grows closer and closer, Lennie takes out a pistol and points it in front of him. A couple of hushed screams go up in the small crowd that has gathered. Dan’s heartbeat is thundering so loud that he thinks everyone watching must be able to see it. 

After what seems like hours, they reach the front of the bank. The guard, hands shaking, points his gun at Lennie’s face. Lennie stays cold and calm, breath steady as he lifts his own and holds it against Ral’s head. 

“I-I’ll shoot,” the guard stammers. 

Lennie takes advantage of the man’s obvious fear, waiting a second too long before replying with an easy grace. “I, too, will shoot,” he says, “I will shoot both of these men, and then I will turn my gun on you.”

The guard takes an unwilling step back, his eyes growing wide as he makes eye contact with Dan, who must be visibly sweating at this point. 

“If you cooperate, sir, I won’t shoot.” Lennie counters. The guard's eyes dart back and forth as if he’s waiting for someone to tell him what to do. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, he lowers his gun. Lennie grins, lowering his as well. 

“Good decision, sir… If you don’t mind, I’m going to go on inside.”

The guard nods, gulping. 

“And you’ll stay outside.” 

The guard nods again. 

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Lennie smiles brightly, and then gives Dan a shove to get him moving again. 

As soon as they get inside, Dan lets out a huge breath of air that he didn’t even know he had been holding. 

“Not so bad, huh?” Lennie says, reaching down to undo Dan’s fake bonds.  
“You didn’t have a gun pointed at your head,” Ral counters payfully, and Lennie laughs.  
“Careful, friend, or I might just leave your hands where they are.”

They turn the corner to see a couple other boys, who had apparently climbed in through a back window while Lennie was talking to the guard. 

“Seems a bit backwards to have windows on a bank, eh?” One of them jokes.   
“Hey, I’m not complaining.”

Dan rubs his wrists, letting himself calm down. 

“You alright there, Dan?”

Dan looks up to see the boys staring at him, grinning with kind eyes. He can’t help but to return their smile. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

Dan turns around to watch the front of the bank, looking out the soiled windows to make sure that nobody is coming to try to bust them. It’s hard to make anything out through the dust that must have been accumulating on them for years, but Dan can vaguely make out the form of the guard. He’s pacing back and forth, seemingly unsure of what to do. 

Dan looks over his shoulder, making sure there’s still a couple of boys near him. He’s on guard duty, and he’s sure that Phil had given him that job because there was literally nothing easier to do. At the time, Dan had been a bit insulted, but now he’s thankful that he’s not scooping gold into saddle bags. 

If everything goes right, he’ll see Phil in a couple minutes. He doesn’t want to think about what might happen if everything doesn’t go right. 

A loud whoop goes up from somewhere deeper in the bank, immediately followed by the sounds of shushing and shallow laughter. A gunshot goes off, and Dan turns around in momentary surprise before remembering that it was their agreed-upon signal. Looking back, he thinks, they might want to think of a quieter one for next time. 

Even from inside, Dan can hear the scattered shouts going up from the unfortunate townspeople who had happened to be walking down the main street at the wrong hour. But their screams die out shortly, and from them rises a confident voice. Though Dan can’t make out the words that the voice is saying, he wholly recognizes it as Phil’s.

He lets out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. 

Dan cranes his neck to try to make out the crowd through the spots on the window, and is able to see Phil’s tall figure as he addresses the people. A murmur goes up through the crowd, and the people begin to move closer and closer to the bank. 

Thank goodness, Dan thinks, everything is going according to plan. 

“Dan!” He hears a voice behind him call, and turns around to see Jesse and Billy standing on the opposite wall. 

“Yeah?” he counters, confused as to why they’re talking to him. 

“Want to come carve your name?” 

Dan is confused for a second, and then sees the small pocket knife in Billy’s hands. Looking at the wall, he sees that they’ve already scrawled some letters into it. 

Dan isn’t sure why he says yes - maybe it’s his newfound confidence with the success of the heist, maybe it’s that he has a bit of a secret need to feel like a part of the gang - but he does. 

He nods, making his way over to the wall quickly, and Billy tosses the knife to him. Dan’s heart jumps into his throat, but, miraculously, he catches it by the handle. Billy applauds quietly, and Dan grins. 

He leans down to the wall to see what they’ve written. 

“PHIL LESTER AND THE KIDS”

He chuckles. 

“Phil hates that name,” Jesse says, knowing what Dan is laughing at, “It’s a bit stupid, really, but we like it.”

Dan can understand why the boys like it so much. From what he’s gathered, none of the boys in the gang had liked their home, or come from a place that they minded leaving - Dan included. The boys really were kids - in terms of recklessness, at least - and Phil was probably the closest thing to a father that most of them had had. 

Underneath that, they had each printed their names wildly and yet gracefully, as if they had done it a thousand times before. 

“JESSE ABRAMS” and “BILLY”

Dan scratched his own name into the surface, going over his handwriting a couple times to make sure that the letters would stay in the wall for a long time. 

As he connected the bar in the “A”, the doors to the bank burst open. 

Dan’s heart rate immediately jumped, and he let the knife clatter to the ground. The guard was standing there, sweating and breathing heavily. Billy and Jesse both instinctively turned their heads so that he wouldn’t see their faces, and ducked quickly into the hallway. 

Dan, however, looked him right in the eye, unable to move even though he knew that he should be running for cover as fast as possible. Footsteps echoing through the walls told Dan that this is what the others were doing. 

Dan is the sacrificial lamb by process of elimination. The other boys, he’s sure, are throwing sacks of gold out of the window and jumping down, bracing themselves for impact, stumbling into the valley, and getting on the horses to ride away. He can’t blame them - if he could be getting away right now, he would jump at the chance. 

But the guard is transfixed on him, moving closer, and Dan knows that he won’t be able to get out of this one. He feels a sudden urge to cry. If only he hadn’t left his post - if only he had done what he was supposed to - he would have seen the guard turn to come back in, and he could have shouted a warning… he could have been out there by now. Getting away. 

He’s taking shallow breaths, and it feels like the air coming into his body isn’t making its way to his lungs. 

The guard sneers, not caring about the other boys getting away as long as he has one to show for his efforts, a scapegoat that he can blame everything on. “Got you,” he says, his voice stabilizing. 

And then, suddenly, the door to the bank flies open again. The guard turns his head, and Dan flicks his eyes up to see what’s going on. 

It’s Phil, looking more alarmed than Dan has ever seen him. In a way, it’s disarming to see Phil looking like he’s out of his element. 

The guard is confused as well. He keeps his gun steady, pointing at Phil’s chest. 

Phil takes a shaky breath in. “Sir, I - well, I just saw some boys riding down the street - they seemed to have money with them…”

Dan is confused for a moment, and then understands Phil’s ingenious act. The guard is easily fooled, lowering his gun and scoffing in annoyance. 

“You shouldn’t concern yourself with law enforcement affairs.” The guard sneers. 

Phil furrows his brow, taking a calculated step closer to the guard. “I just thought you might like to know, you know, I think I saw Jonathan Galey on one of the horses - you know, I think the FBI is after him. Isn’t that important?”

The guard’s stature tenses - obviously, he’s surprised by the artfully deceptive piece of information. “Well -” he stammers. 

Phil takes another step forward. “Shouldn’t you go out and get him?”

“I will - ” the guard lies, “I have a plan, and, frankly, it shouldn’t concern you!”

Phil takes yet another step forward, bringing himself face to face with the guard. Slowly, his faux confusion drains from his face, and he raises his shoulders to bring him to his full height. 

“It does concern me,” Phil answers coldly.

In a burst of motion, Phil reaches forward and disarms the guard, flipping his body so that he’s holding both the guard’s hands behind his back. The guard cries out instinctively, squirming around to try to find his way out of Phil’s grip. 

But Phil has his gun, and holds it steadily, bringing it up and letting it rest against the guard’s head, who abruptly stops moving. 

“Please don’t make me shoot you, sir.” Phil offers.  
“I - I won’t. I’ll let you go.” The guard immediately surrenders, his robust confidence nowhere to be seen now that his life is threatened. 

“Leave,” Phil commands, and releases his grip on the guard’s hands. He immediately turns and scurries out of the bank like a scorned puppy. As soon as the door slams shut, Phil looks up and meets Dan’s eyes. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” He says, his voice metallic. None of the usual fondness is laced through his words. 

Dan opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. He realizes that he’s still holding his hands above his head in a cowardly surrender, but he can’t figure out how to lower them. All he can pay attention to is the uncontrollable beating of his heart.

Phil sighs, looking down at the stone floor. When he looks up, the ice in his eyes has thawed a little bit. 

“It’s alright, Dan… let’s go, okay?”

Dan’s arms fall to his side, and he lowers his head in shame. He takes a deep breath in, and when it comes out, it has a shaky, nervous edge to it. 

“Dan,” Phil insists, and Dan can see his beat up boots walk into his periphery. 

He looks up to see Phil standing, very, very close to him. He places his arm on Dan’s shoulder, gently dragging it down and gripping Dan’s hand for a fleeting second. Dan feels himself beginning to relax. 

But, suddenly, Phil hardens again, taking his hand away from Dan and hiding it behind his back.

“We need to go before anything else happens.”

They go out through the window. Landing hurts Dan’s knees, and he takes Phil’s hand to support them as he gets up. Dan goes to untie his mare, being as quiet as possible so that he can hear Phil as well. Just to make sure he’s still there. 

Phil rides up to him, sitting tall on his sculpturesque stallion, and Dan swings up and kicks his horse so that it will follow. 

They don’t speak at all for a couple minutes, and Phil rides a comfortable distance in front of Dan. Dan knows that Phil could be miles in front of him right now if he wanted to, though, so a couple of extra feet is no big deal. 

Especially not when Phil closes that distance so that they’re riding side by side. The sun is high in the sky, and Dan finds himself thankful for his hat. For a second, he thinks back to the day that Phil gave it to him. 

“I’m sorry, Dan,” Phil says abruptly, and Dan turns to look at him. Their eyes meet for a second, and Phil does look sorry. Though, for what, Dan can’t understand.

“I’m such a bastard.”

Dan isn’t sure where this is coming from. Something tells him it may be better to be silent than say anything, though. 

“I shouldn’t have - I mean, you should have been with me. How did I expect you - and what did I think you would do?”

Phil speaks to Dan, but it seems like he’s addressing himself. 

“It wasn't fair, and I knew it wasn't.”

There’s a pause. Dan sees Phil’s face turned to him, but he stares up at the sky instead of making eye contact. 

“It was fair enough. I’m not the captive anymore. I can’t just ride along anymore.”

There’s an edge to his voice that he didn’t intend on being there - but he knows it’s true. It was as fair for Phil to have Dan keep watch as it was fair for him to ask Lennie to load the bags. 

“That’s not what I mean,” Phil says.   
“What, then?”  
“I don’t like not knowing whether you’re safe or not.”  
“Nobody’s ever fucking safe around here.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t come across as one.   
“I just don’t want you getting hurt.”  
“Yeah, me neither.” Another weak attempt at humor. 

“Look at me, Dan,” Phil commands, and Dan obliges. Phil has a sharp stature that he didn’t have moments ago.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”  
“...Yeah…”  
“I don’t think you do.”  
“Well, what are you saying, then?”

Phil is the one to break eye contact, now, and as they turn the corner they see the other boys’ horses on the horizon line. Phil breathes in the thin Colorado air. 

“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you,” he says, and then kicks his horse and gallops further away from Dan, who is left more confused than ever. 

That night, the boys are jovial, shaky off adrenaline that hasn’t left their veins. They apologize for leaving Dan, and Dan tries to be understanding - telling them he’s sure he would’ve done the same thing. Try as he might, though, he can’t relax and joke around with the rest of the gang. 

Slowly, everyone calls out a goodnight and passes out wherever they were sitting. The fire is haphazardly stomped out, sparks flying out as embers are crushed beneath soles. 

The number of boys who stay awake dwindles until it’s just Dan and a younger boy named James. 

“First heist,” he says, attempting to make easy conversation.

Dan takes a swig of whiskey. “Yeah.” 

“Pretty thrilling one.”  
“Yeah.”

James nods, lying down himself. 

It’s only Dan awake now, slowly making his way through the whiskey, watching one of the surviving embers glowing a curious red-orange shade. 

For some reason, he starts to cry. Maybe it’s the stress of the day getting to him, maybe it’s that he’s more confused than ever about Phil, maybe it’s that his homesickness has caught back up to him for a strange moment. Either way, tears are soundlessly making their way down his dirty cheeks, his breath wavering. 

Suddenly, he feels arms wrap around him. He startles, trying to turn around to see who they belong to. 

“Just me,” he hears a low, hushed voice, and he immediately recognizes it as Phil.

Too worn out to protest, Dan leans back into Phil’s chest, turning his head so that his cheek rests against Phil’s bare chest. 

“Why are you crying, Dan?”  
“Not sure.”  
“Is it because of me?”  
“I don’t know.”

Phil tightens his grip ever so slightly, letting his chin rest atop Dan’s head. 

“I’m sorry.”  
“You already told me that.”  
“Yeah, I know. I just…”

Dan waits for Phil to finish his thought, but he never does. 

“You just… what?”  
“I just worry about you.”

Dan chuckles, remembering what the boys had carved into the wall earlier.

“Phil Lester and the kids.”

Phil shifts, and Dan accidentally falls further into him. Neither boy makes any move to correct it.

“What?”  
“You worry about everyone, like we’re your kids.”

Phil laughs too, and Dan feels his chest buzz. 

“I guess I do, Dan… but it’s not the same thing.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“You know what I mean.”  
“What?”  
“You don’t know?”  
“Is this the same thing as earlier?”  
“Same thing as always.”  
“Why can’t you tell me, then…?”

Phil breathes in, shifting again so that Dan’s head leans into the crook of his shoulder.

He doesn’t answer for a while, and when he does, it doesn’t clear anything up.

“Just because I can’t.”

Dan is too tired to argue. “Oh.”

He closes his eyes. Slumped against Phil’s form and breathing in the scent of the fire that rests in his hair, he feels a deep pang in his chest. 

He feels suddenly certain that he would sacrifice everything to stay in this moment forever - and it is then when he understands what Phil is saying. 

He reaches out to grab Phil’s hand, and feels Phil suck in a quick breath before exhaling. 

“Yeah.” Phil says.   
“Yeah.” Dan echoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for ur kudos ;)


	8. chapter eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble in paradise

That night at the fire would become the subject of much scrutinization by Dan over the next week. What Phil had said - what he thought Phil had said - was that he returned Dan’s own feelings for him. 

And over the next couple of days, Phil had made a point of catching Dan’s eye and grinning, just to remind him. They would stay up late, waiting until it was just them, and then lean into each other and talk about everything under the sun. 

But when Dan woke up on that third day, something had changed. 

It was midday. He’s used to waking up earlier - usually, if the sun was too far above the horizon and he wasn't awake, he would be unceremoniously jostled until he opened his eyes. 

The boys were having a jovial conversation around the fire, one that Phil and Jesse seemed to be at the center of. Laughter echoed around the little meadow in which they had set up camp, and the boys made a show of punching Phil in the arm and knocking Jesse’s hat off his head. 

Dan just lies back, watching the lonely clouds move through the sky. He can wait a little longer before sitting up.

He lets his eyes close, flirting with sleep.

When he wakes up again, the sun is much higher in the sky, and the clouds have been driven away in favor of a cool, endless blue. He sits up, pulls a piece of grass out of his hair, and breathes the mountain air in. 

He hears noise in the distance and turns his head to see that the boys are untying their horses on the other side of the field. This strikes Dan as a little odd - usually, the boys wake him up long before the horses are untied. 

He gets up, brushing stray pieces of grass and pollen off his jeans. He puts on his hat and takes another breath in before making his way over to the others.

They greet him happily, making fun of him for sleeping in late. He smiles, eyes secretly searching for Phil in the crowd. He doesn’t see him. 

Discouraged, he turns to the boy next to him, who happens to be Jesse. 

“Where are we headed today, then?” Dan asks. 

A couple of boys overhear, and they all chuckle. Johnny, who’s standing next to Jesse, knocks him in the shoulder and smirks. Jesse smiles and looks down. 

“Yeah, where are we going?” Another boy shouts out, obviously making fun of Jesse for something. Dan is utterly confused. 

“Shut up,” Jesse mutters, sheepish. 

Dan looks down at his feet, uncomfortable that he doesn’t understand the obvious joke. A couple of seconds go by, and then Jesse clears his throat and picks his head back up. 

“We’re getting some supplies from a house near here,” he says, then breaks out in a smile. 

Dan, still confused, just nods, then makes his way over to his own horse, quickly untying the knot that had been tethering her to a tree nearby. 

They are riding within the hour. Dan’s at the back of the pack, as per usual, but today he feels more of a divide between him and the other boys. He shouldn’t get so invested in not understanding a joke between the other boys, but he feels inexplicably sad - like he had been excluded from a game of tag in the schoolyard. 

They ride for a while, and the sun begins to stain the sky as they summit a large hill and come upon a valley with a simple river coursing through it. 

The grass is tall, and dotted with spots of color that Dan recognizes as wildflowers. About a dozen horses graze, tails flicking back and forth lazily as they wind their way through the grass. In the far corner, a pretty sizable house stands tall and yet looks immature compared to the grand barn beside it. 

One of the boys lets out a yell, kicking his horse on and racing down the grassy hill into the divide below. The others fall suit, hands coming up to keep their hands on as they throw their heads back to laugh and cheer. 

Dan can’t help but smile as his horse flies down the hill with them. He closes his eyes, feeling the warm, dry air against his skin. 

Once they get into the valley, they slow down. Jesse leads the pack, and jumps easily off his horse to cross the sleepy, bubbling stream. The oranges in the sky deepen, casting a glow on the scene. 

They near the house, and Dan is able to make out two figures standing on the grand porch, leaning against the wooden columns. 

They are two girls, obviously related. One has her arms folded across her chest, ripped up jeans and a collared shirt tucked into it loosely. Her orange hair curls effortlessly, spilling down from her head and gathering at her waist. Her eyes are a peculiar color - they seem to move with the sun-stained sky reflecting in them. 

The other’s hair, though the same shade of red, is pin straight. She wears a simple dress, mint green with a tattered bottom. Her eyes are a simple blue, and she has a sweet smile that makes her whole face look young and pretty. 

Both girls wave happily, their bare feet shifting on the porch as they wait for the boys to get closer. 

The boys wave back. Jesse gets to the porch first, and jumps off his horse so eagerly that his hat falls off his head. Not even taking a pause to see where it landed, he bounds up the porch steps and wraps his arms around the girl in the dress. 

She practically jumps into his arms, yelling in delight, and kisses him chastely, looking down and blushing after they break apart. 

“I missed you,” she says giddily, and a couple of the boys laugh, one throwing out a wolf whistle. 

Oh, Dan thinks, this is why they’ve been making fun of Jesse all day. Then he remembers, earlier that morning, when he had first woken up - they had been making fun of Phil as well. 

He whips his head around to look at the other end of the porch. To his relief, the other girl is still standing alone, simply conversing with Phil as he remains on his stallion. 

Dan shakes his head slightly. He needs to stop being so paranoid.

The other boys move to get off their horses, and Dan follows suit. He feels a little out of place, but tells himself to snap out of it as the boys lead their horses toward the handsome barn. 

Once inside, they are greeted by a multitude of stalls - much more, Dan thinks, than he saw horses outside. Then again, maybe Phil’s crew stays here often. He wouldn’t know. 

He puts his mare up, making sure to give her food and water. 

Lennie comes up to him and smiles by way of greeting. 

“Hi,” Dan returns.   
“Those girls are the Bennets, if you were wondering.”

Dan nods.

“Old friends of Phil’s. They used to supply him back before us. Sweet girls, they are.”

Dan nods again. 

“And beautiful, too - now, I’m not often jealous of Jesse - but I have to say.”

Lennie catches his eye, and it’s clear that he’s trying to make a joke. Dan laughs lightly. Lennie cocks his head in confusion, but decides to let it go. 

“Joan is the one you have to watch out for, though,” he says, as if Dan is supposed to know which one is Joan. 

“They call her Queen Joan. I’m not saying she would beat me in a fight, but I wouldn’t want to start one with her.”

Dan forces a laugh again, and Lennie raises his eyebrows. 

“Something up?”

Yes. For some, stupid, stupid, reason, Dan is jealous. And he doesn’t even know whether he’s jealous of the rest of the boys for being friends for longer than he has, if he’s jealous of Jesse for having that girl, if he’s jealous of the other girl for talking to Phil - or if it’s some perverted mixture of all three - but he doesn’t like it either way. 

“No, I’m fine.”  
“Alright…” 

Lennie turns to leave the barn, and Dan follows suit. The sky is darker than it was before, the colors are less vibrant, and a couple of clouds have rolled in to cast a grey shadow over the valley. 

The air has a small bite to it, and Dan rubs his arms as he walks behind Lennie towards the house. He glances back into the field and catches a glance of orange hair - the girl with curly hair, the girl who had been talking to Phil earlier, is leading the grazing horses back towards the barn. It takes a second before he notices Phil’s black stallion riding next to her, his hands resting lightly on the reins, his lips upturned.

The inside of the house is messily grand, dust piling in the corners and on top of fireplaces that barely look used. The ceilings are tall, though, and there is an entire room devoted to a large table in which all the boys are sitting. 

The girl in the dress sits in Jesse’s lap, and she playfully puts his hat on her head. He laughs at her, and smiles at the back of her head as she turns around to capture the rest of the group in conversation. 

Dan feels like he is watching the happy dinner scene from behind a one way glass mirror - he can see them, but they can’t see him at all. 

Phil sits at the head of the table, and the girl - Joan - sits by his side. They are locked in a quiet conversation that Dan has no prayers of hearing over the din of everybody else’s. She is resting her chin elegantly on the back of her hand, her elbow resting on the table. The corners of her mouth turn up into a slight smile, and her eyes are the slightest bit closed. Dan can still easily see the mosaic of color in them, and his jealousy burns in his stomach. 

Phil’s hand moves to cover hers. Dan feels like making a show of getting up from the table, glaring at Phil and throwing the hat he had given him so long ago onto the table. 

Why he’s overreacting so much, he doesn’t know. It could just be that this girl and Phil are close friends. That would explain everything… the sitting next to each other, the riding around together, how obviously comfortable and familiar they seem with each other. 

Dan realizes that he hasn’t spoken to Phil all day - they haven’t even exchanged a glance. He looks up from the uneaten food on his plate, determined to catch Phil’s eye so that he can be reassured. 

He stares at Phil for a solid minute.

Jesse and the girl on his lap - who, through passing conversation, Dan had learned was named Meg - are the first to get up from the table, eliciting jeers and whoops. Jesse smiles from ear to ear, his face flushed, and Meg punches him lightly before they disappear from the room altogether. 

One by one, the boys retire, leaving the room and going to pass out on one of the many formerly-grand couches. 

Finally, it’s just Dan, Billy, an older guy named Toby, Phil, and Joan. 

Billy and Toby are making tipsy smalltalk across the table from Dan, and Phil and Joan seem to be in a staring contest. 

Dan looks at his feet, deciding to get up. Maybe that, at least, would make Phil notice him. 

He pulls back his chair, and the wood makes a scraping sound as it drags across the beaten floor. Billy glances up, then back at Toby. Phil makes no move to look at all. 

Dan’s eyes flit back and forth, scanning the scene. He stretches, extending his arms to the impossibly high ceilings, glancing towards Phil one more time to see if he was paying any attention. 

Instead, he sees Phil’s thumb rubbing the back of Joan’s hand lightly. 

Dan leaves the room, entering into a living room whose couches are all accounted for. A couple boys lounge around, still drinking, and a couple more are passed out already. Dan keeps walking through the house, glancing into the rooms until he finds one that’s empty. He doesn’t much feel like company tonight. 

He sits down on a green couch, and the floor creaks beneath him. He lets his shoulders droop as he lets out a breath. 

Had he been wrong about what Phil was saying? Had he really misinterpreted everything between them? Or had he just misinterpreted whatever was happening between him and Joan?

He kicks his feet up, not bothering to take off his beaten boots. After all, he’s used to keeping them on. This is the first time in months in which he hasn’t been sleeping on a tarp on the ground, in the desert or in the middle of a field, hoping that it doesn’t rain. 

He smiles fondly, thinking of the time, the first day they were in Colorado, that he had woken up at some ungodly hour to the pouring down rain. He had jolted up, water pooling on his chest and hair, soaking every article of clothing he was wearing. 

The other boys had awoken too, and the rain ended up creating the perfect backdrop for them to viciously and playfully attack each other, slinging mud, wet jeans, and whatever else they could find at each other from across the grass.

Dan had hit Phil with a particularly well-aimed ball of dirt, and Phil had retaliated by getting half of the other boys to tirade against dan with wet flannel. Despite being wet and smelling of dirt the next morning, it had been one of Dan’s favorite days. 

But after that, they had made sure to sleep under trees. 

He opens his eyes to a dark sky outside. He hears distant talking from somewhere in the house. He squints to read a clock on the wall, which tells him that it’s two in the morning. 

He breathes in the musty scent of the couch, swallowing. His shoulders hurt, cramped from curling up, and he stands up and walks to the window. Most of it is covered in what must have years worth of dirt, but he can see the night sky and its hanging moon anyway. 

He leaves the room, strolling through the hallways. He focuses on the rhythm of his boots on the hardwood floor, breathing in deeply and trying not to think about the events of dinner and - well, the entire day beforehand. 

He glances into one of the rooms further down the hall. Figuring that it’s empty, he steps in to see if there’s a more comfortable couch anywhere so that his shoulders can catch a break. 

As soon as he enters the room, he sees it. 

Phil is in there, his hat still places perfectly on his head even though there is no sun to protect his eyes from. His white button down, stained with desert sands, is all the way unbuttoned. His hands are wrapped around a figure, whose own arms are curled around his shoulders, trapping him in her embrace. 

His hat hides her face, but her hair gives it away. 

Dan feels all his pent up insecurity rush out of him all at once, and he raises a fist as his jaw drops. All the signals that he had tried to explain away - and here was Phil, kissing Joan.

Dan feels like he is intruding as Phil breaks away, obviously smiling, and takes a couple of steps to push her against the wall. 

He feels frozen, unmovable - just like he did when the guard was holding him at gunpoint three days ago in that bank. 

That time, though, Phil had come to his rescue. Now Phil was the cause of his paralyzation. 

Phil breaks the kiss again, and Dan hears him whisper something to Joan in a hushed, low voice. 

For some reason, hearing Phil’s voice breaks Dan’s stupor. That’s his voice, the same one he used to tell Dan that he felt something too. The same one that had saved him countless times. The same one who had taught him how to shoot a gun, the same one who had held him at gunpoint all those months ago. 

The one that had trusted Dan enough to tell him a story that even his boys didn’t know.

The one that Dan had come to trust - no, to love - even through everything that went wrong. 

Part of Dan wants to announce his presence - to yell at Phil, to tell Joan everything, to break a vase, run outside, untie his mare, and ride off into the darkness. 

But the other part of him cares so much about Phil, that, in some twisted way, he is happy if Phil is happy - even if that happiness has broken his heart a little. 

And that part, as usual, wins out. 

So Dan turns to leave, already trying to forget everything that had happened the past couple days, weeks, months - to erase all the good things until he regresses to the scared teenager whose blood had once boiled at the sight of Phil at all. 

But the old house - in particular, the floor - had other plans. As he crosses the doorway, his foot catches a floorboard that’s out of place, and it creaks. Quietly. But loudly enough. 

Dan squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that the moment will pass and he can slip out of the room, but instead he hears a noise of surprise, shifting feet, and a murmur. 

“...Dan?” Phil’s voice says, laced with the raspiness of nighttime. 

Dan has no idea what to say. 

“Yeah.”

Another silence. 

“Why are you in here?”

A better question, Dan thinks, is ‘why are you in here when you told me two days ago that you had feelings for me?’

“Was trying to find a couch - sorry. Thought the room was empty.”

Dan prays that Phil will let him cross the doorway and just pretend like this never happened - like nothing between them ever happened. 

“Are you okay?” Phil asks, and Dan wants to whirl around and tell them that of course not and how could you think I would be okay and…

Instead, he just nods, not even wondering whether Phil can see him, and walks out of the room. 

He lies on the green couch and stares up at the ceiling. There’s a spot of paint that’s peeling the slightest bit, and this has been the object of Dan’s attention for the past half hour. 

He can’t sleep. 

He rolls over onto his side, choosing instead to focus on the grills of the fireplace. He doesn’t hear any noises in the house, which is a good thing. His imagination would be going even more wild than it already is if he could hear anything.

Finally, when he is moments away from drifting off, he hears quick footsteps move through the hall. 

They get louder, closer, and then stop. 

“You awake, Dan?” He hears a whisper. Phil’s voice. 

He doesn’t answer. What would Phil even say to him? What would he even say to Phil?

He feels pressure at the end of the couch, which he takes to mean that Phil is sitting there. He squints his eyes open to try to make out what the other boy is doing. 

He’s no longer wearing his hat, but still has his jeans and boots on. His shirt is missing. Someone must’ve taken it off him, Dan thinks, and then chides himself. 

“I’m so sorry, Dan,” he hears Phil say in a curious tone of voice. 

He opens his eyes a little more and sees a tear making its way down Phil’s cheek. 

“I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

Dan scoffs, then goes rigid as he realizes Phil thinks he’s asleep. Phil stiffens up too. 

“Are you awake?” He asks, and Dan reluctantly opens his eyes. 

“Yeah. You woke me.”  
“Sorry.” 

Phil won’t catch his eyes. 

“Could you just look at me?” Dan asks bluntly, and Phil’s eyes drop from the wall to Dan instantly.   
“I don’t know what to say,” He says weakly.   
“Why did you lie to me?”  
“I didn’t lie to you, Dan… What are you talking about?”  
“Yes, you did. Or have you already forgotten what you told me?”

Phil pauses, his eyes darting around but never leaving Dan’s. 

“I didn’t lie to you.”

Dan narrows his eyes. “Then why the fuck did you kiss her”

Phil’s head drops into his hands. “I’m not sure. Old bad habit.”  
“You didn’t talk to me this whole day. Didn’t even look at me.”  
“You don’t think I feel guilty about that?”  
“You didn’t. Else you wouldn’t have done shit.”

Phil groans into his hands. 

“You’re right.”  
“So you don’t feel guilty, then.”  
“No - not that. Just - there was no good reason.”

“Then what good reason do I have to forgive you?” 

Phil looks up at the ceiling, and Dan can tell that he is begging himself to stop crying. 

“I’m not sure.”  
“You like her.”  
“No - I don’t like her, Dan.”  
“None of this makes sense.”

Phil looks him dead in the eyes then. 

“I know. I’m scared.”  
“Me too.”

Phil scoots closer to Dan, their thighs pressed together in the lowlight of the dirty windows. Dan feels like his eyes are as wide as the moon as Phil moves over him so that their bodies are parallel, one on top of the other. 

Phil’s lips are tantalizingly close to Dan’s. 

“Don’t kiss me,” Dan breathes, and Phil’s brow furrows before he sighs, the warm air expelling onto Dan’s face.   
“I won’t. Sorry. I-”

Dan twists his head to the side, staring at the fire to distract himself from Phil’s breathing, which he can literally feel on top of him. 

“I’m so, so sorry, Dan.”  
“Let me sleep.”

There’s a pause. 

“Alright.”

And, with that, Phil’s warm body is removed from Dan’s, and Dan closes his eyes so that he doesn’t see Phil’s form retreat into the doorway and to his own room down the hall. He wonders where Joan is - if Phil is going back to her, if his trip to see Dan was explained to her as a trip to the bathroom or to the kitchen to get water. 

He never sleeps that night, but still manages to stay in bed even later than he had the previous day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks you guys so much, as always, for reading and supporting me. it means the world!!
> 
> x


End file.
